Finding the girl in the reflection

A moment glimpsed in the slider door to the balcony of my sixth floor apartment. A girl blocked my view. She was on the phone with a friend who had just moved 600 miles away. It was one o'clock in the morning. She was pacing, brought out of bed by the call. Adorned in a tank top and underwear she seemed happy. A story unfolds in my mind's eye...

... A recovering self abuser, blessed with an eating disorder. A chronic pain condition which her medication amplifies. Learning to stand on her own, not as the clunky costume played before but as the honest representation of her window, she is connected to so many things.

She feels in so many ways. Proud to be fighting instead of crumpling from the weight of depression. She is on her way to becoming not who, but what she always wanted. Her goals don't look so far away. She connects with others as if never knowing what friendship was like. She is happy. She feels attractive.

Standing in front of this glass door she talks with a friend about all the new things in life. Outside looking in this girl seems on top of her game. Overcoming obstacles, and forcing herself to remember: This is hard because it is new. Keep doing it and it will no longer be new, and no longer hard...

Yet here I am still holding on to that thread of dysmorphia. Outside these small moments of gender euphoria, where blur and dim light allow a different view, the mirror holds an uglier truth. Each gradual day of change in the body, produced almost zero modifications in my perception. The person looking back, hasn't transformed at all.

How sad it is that my perception of my body plays such a role in my understanding of the world. All of the work finding out that I am a good, kind, empathetic, caring, and strong person does not shatter the blanket shadow of dysmorphia. This affliction must be some kind of comforting. Or maybe a protection. This thread reaches deep in the roots of my experience. I am very attached to this perception. I say I am not attached, but if I weren't wouldn't something have changed?

What could she tell me? If that girl, in the reflection of my slider door, was in the room with me what would she say?

Today, my imagination told me that she would talk of freedom. The freedom to interpret your reality as you see fit. The subtle shifts you can make by looking for different qualities of the events around you. How you can find the awareness to notice your own biases. And how you can change them. She does not speak of changing the unchangeable. The window that you see the universe through cannot be demolished for renovations, for that would cease your existence. We can choose its shutters, drapes, curtains, trimming, glass. Each deserving of different care and attention. This freedom to choose applies to all of us. To find that freedom takes accepting you will have to leave the reality you are in. Journeys forward call for change. Not in action, or thought, but of your essence towards life. The raw feeling of what life is to you. She says you can create that world if you only let go of the one you're in.