7 Years Bad Luck/7 Years Good Luck

I hear the sound of it falling right as I am finally drifting back to sleep. Like a foley sound in a corny old movie, the glass explodes with force.

“Why would anyone put a mirror right here?” he questions from the bathroom.

Some of the pieces have shattered into such tiny parts it looks like glitter is covering the floor. It would be almost magical in another context. Like you could step on them and be transported to a new world.

The reality is, there are shards of glass covering the bathroom floor. The hand mirror has broken. He’s the one who broke it, but I’m the one who will have bad luck. It’s because I left it in a spot it should not have been.

The ensuing look on his face after his moment of fluster is a rather recent development, but it is a face I am unfortunately growing used to. A look of disgust which is triggered by most of the things I do and most of the things I do not do.

I reach for the trash can and then pick up the plastic handle of the mirror.

“Don’t come in here, you’ll cut yourself!” he warns.

I drop the pieces and stand outside the door. I’ve already crossed the threshold of this situation. There will be no understanding for me.

There is one little sliver of glass at my feet. I can see my eye in the frame of it. I really want to touch it

He doesn’t want to touch me anymore. When I try to touch him, he says I seem desperate. That’s because I am. I can see it in my bloodshot eye staring back at me from the reflection. I pick up the little piece and take it through the kitchen to the bin.

“You must have been worth nothing more than a single month of bad stuff.” I tell it before I let it fall.

I’ve been talking to objects again. Something I’ve done as long as I can remember but it gets a lot worse when I’m lonely and wanting.

It isn’t attractive to want things. And it’s not attractive to feel sorry for yourself. These things shouldn’t be contradictory, they are both just bad.

I’ve never had a man in my life tell me I’m unattractive. I’ve never had one tell me my dreams are no good either. And it is hard to tell if this is because I’m getting older and naturally my beauty and potential are fading, or if everyone else has been lying to me. They just wanted to inflate my ego.

He is telling the truth when he says to me,

“I wish you didn’t have an ego.”

My mom keeps telling me that the way he talks to me isn’t personal. That no matter who he was with he’d say the same things.

“He just wants to hurt you.”

She always says. But she never tells me to leave him. She’s never told me what to do in my entire life so I really can’t fault her now of all times.

Sometimes I want to hurt him too. When he’s in a really foul mood he taunts me. He says that I ought to hit him. He really wants me to. Even if I tried, I know it wouldn’t work. I hit like a girl and I’m afraid of violence. Violence is only okay in the movies.

“Why would anyone do that? Leave it here?” he asks from the bathroom.

He and I are the only people that live here. I don’t have an answer for him.

When he moved in nine months ago I asked him to organize the bathroom storage. Most of the shampoo bottles and first aid he had hauled in from the spare room he rented out in the county were all expired. Still, he had brought them all with him. There were all manner of used razors, tissues, and empty pill bottles. I was not to touch them as it was going to be his responsibility.

Six months ago I reminded him to organize the bathroom storage and he said he’d get around to it. Then three months ago I brought it up again. Usually if I ask something of him, he reminds me that he works more than I do. It’s up to me to tend to the house. I should want to do that, take care of people.

He hates his job. He hates most things. He hates himself. And now he hates me too. It was an obvious progression.

Last night when sleep was running from me as she tends to do now, I found myself in the bathroom, mindlessly opening and closing drawers. It was like being on drugs, all the garbage in the drawers seemed to be pulsing, to be breathing. It was no longer piles of junk, it became an abstract painting. Anxiety and fear can feel like being on a substance. And in my case I stared down into the mess and caught sight of a used cue tip. The end of it coated in a dark orange goo which dried probably more than a year ago.

Something came over me. I swore I would just do a little. Then time escaped and all of the drawers were scrubbed out and sorted before I could slow down.

On top of the pile of garbage I choose seven of the most interesting looking pieces. On my glass top table I assemble them. At first they look like they could each be little masses of land spread across an unfamiliar planet. I scoot them around and they become the face of a cat. I’ve always wanted a cat. I think it’s maybe the only creature I could feel truly not alone around. I had a rabbit for a while. But she developed a brain problem and began to bite me every chance she got. I had to put her down and I felt bad that I was relieved to do it.

The pieces of glass can be assembled to make a fan, a dress, a tall building. I can feel the dust from them getting into my fingertips. I don’t care.

I crouch on the chair and look down into the shards in front of me. My face looks bright, wholly different than what I assumed. The redness from before in my eyes has vanished and there is a pearl-like gleam facing me now. The woman through the looking glass looks happy. She looks like a person I’d want to be friends with. She does look like she has an ego.

It would be really hard to totally get rid of your ego. I looked it up after the second or third time he told me I’d be better off without one. Turns out, not a lot of people succeed in totally getting rid of theirs.

Just because the woman looking back at me has an ego, it doesn’t mean that she is bad. She isn’t trying to be bad either. And she definitely isn’t trying to acquire seven years of bad luck. She looks like me and she doesn’t look like me. If I stepped through the looking glass, would a different version of me be on the other side? Probably, but not as exciting as a fairytale.

The melatonin I took is making me feel weird again. It comes in waves, the weirdness. I take way too much of it because these days it’s all about dulling myself as much as I can as often as I can without doing physical harm to myself or others. Except in trying to escape my life I did because I left the mirror on the edge of the counter where it should not have been.

The thing is, I didn’t cause harm.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks me.

He must have sensed I am still awake even though we sleep in separate bedrooms.

“Nothing.” I say.

“No more pouting.” he says.

No more pouting.

If he could just look in the shards, maybe he’d see himself in there too. A different man who doesn’t hate his life. Who doesn’t hate himself and doesn’t hate his partner.

“Can you come here a second?”

“What?” he asks, even though he heard me.

“Come look for a second at this.”

There it is. He does come over to me and he does look into the glass. He sees what I see when I see my reflection. A person whose eyes gleam and who wants very much to be alive. A person capable of great feeling.

“That’s odd.” he says.

“Isn’t it?”

I can see part of my mirror self, and he can see part of his mirror self.

“I’m sorry.” he says.

He takes my hand. He means it. That’s why I stay. Because there is something tethered and as long as a speck of goodness exists, I will forgive the badness. And because I have a lot of badness too that the audience can’t see really because I’m the skewed voice telling the story. Half of the terrible things are my terrible things. It’s my ego hiding them from you.

It is going to get better. I know everyone says that. I think in our case it is true. Two very unfortunate souls climbing from the pit of hell and through the looking glass together.

“I like these. I’m glad the mirror broke.”

“Me too.” he sighs, “You know what I think we should do?”

“What?”

“We should glue these to something. Make a cool wall hanging.”

“Yeah, then we could see the people there all the time.”

He smirks and for the first time in a very long time takes hold of my wrist.

“Those people are us.” he says, “I promise.”

“I know that.” I whisper.

She is looking back at me from the mirror. I am looking at her.