Somebody Somewhere (42 page)

We entered the room. I was so excited—my own chandelier over the bed. I jumped up on the bed, spun the chandelier and ran my fingers over the crystals making them clack and getting lost in the colors. I was in heaven.

I raced into the bathroom. I was in rapture. There, wall to wall, were mirrors of every description. I felt I was in paradise. I would need no one. I was at home with “me in the mirror” everywhere I looked. I looked at Ian, sure he would be happy for me being so happy and at home. There was a look of concern upon his face.

“I'm sleeping in here!” I announced, buzzing from one mirror to the next. “Donna, it's just a reflection,” said Ian as he slipped away from my awareness along with everything else “significant.”

Ian was on the other side of my glass wall. I beamed from ear to ear oblivious to him as I sat myself down in front of “me, in the mirrors” on all sides. Ian entered the room like an intruder. I didn't want him to see me with “me.” He had no place in this. I turned away.

Ian came and sat down beside me. I turned toward the mirror and did mirror hands with my comrade in the mirror. “It's a reflection,” said Ian. “I know,” I said, snappishly shrugging off his intrusion. “You aren't in there,” he said.

He frightened me. I glared at him. “Yes I am,” I snapped. “Look, you're in there, too,” I said, hoping he would come to see it with as much beauty and addictive captivation as I did. “I am not in the mirror,” Ian said, looking concerned, “I'm here. I'm real. That's not real. You can't touch a reflection.”

“Yes you can,” I said sharply, fear rising in my voice. “Look,” I said, my hands upon those of “me in the mirror.” “Here,” said Ian,
“this is real,” he said, his hands stretched out to do mirror hands, indicating that we were in the “real world.”

I took my hands from the mirror slowly, looking from “me in the mirror” to “him in the mirror” to my hands on his side, to his hands on this side. I reached out and did mirror hands with Ian in the “real world,” my hands gently up against his. Ian was crying.

“She's watching,” I said. “I can't bear it. She's watching.” “She can't watch,” said Ian. “There is no she. It is just an image. She is not real. She is a trick. She is caused by light bouncing from you onto the glass and being bounced back by the silver on the back of the glass and into your eyes so that you see a picture.” “But I can feel her,” I said. “No,” said Ian, “you feel glass and that is all.”

“What is reflection?” asked Ian, checking that I had understood. “It's light, and glass, and silver on the back of the glass making a picture in my eyes,” I said, getting it mixed up. He repeated it simply, a step-by-step, rote lesson. To know it in theory didn't necessarily change the subjective experience. I repeated what he had said, struggling to reconcile it with the emotional and visual experience of touching the other me in the mirror.

Anger washed over me. I was angry because the mirror world was my last bastion of escape. It was my reassurance I could relate to people because, as with characters, they would always be third person. Impenetrability is the ultimate security.

I was angry at the mirror. “A fucking piece of glass with silver on it,” I said, wanting to strike at it and spit upon it. Such a fragile security shattered as easily as the mirror itself. My solid steel walls became as fragile and brittle as glass. “I want to get out of here,” I said, as the feeling of being trapped began to choke me, the blocked-sink effect rising with the implications of echoes of years and years of time spent in a twilight zone.

Ian and I went into another room. I was battling within myself. “I want to do something,” said Ian. Hurriedly, he went into the bathroom and covered some of the mirrors.

We discussed my reflection-obsession. I discussed how I got all the intimacy I needed from getting lost in the gaze of my own reflection.
I discussed how I sat eating with my reflection so that, in comparison, eating with anyone else was uncomfortable or, at least, second best.

I discussed how I didn't need or want company because I felt I had had my quota of company from being with my reflection during the day. I came to realize that although the mirror had begun as an excellent strategy for breaking withdrawal, learning how to be social, fighting isolation, building language, and having body awareness, I had become addicted to its security. I had taken things too far. I would not truly learn ongoing closeness, touch, inner body awareness, and true sharing until I gave up the addiction. I sat up most of the night wrestling with myself.

W
e drove on into Wales, arriving late at night in a little town. We awoke to the sound of the ocean and to a view of a long, wooden bridge disappearing into grayness. Ian and I walked along the bridge, caught up in the smells and sounds and colors and textures. We watched the shifting sands racing toward us. We heard the howl of the wind in our ears. A seagull hovered overhead. “Looook,” he squawked. Ian and I smiled at each other. “He's showing us how easy it is to fly,” I said.

We walked down to the beach—
crunch, crunch
, our feet upon shells. The blue-green ocean tide drifted rhythmically in and out. “How could I be like you?” Ian asked out loud, more to the wind than to me. I did not answer. “So, I'm autistic,” he announced, out loud to himself. I said nothing.

W
e were on the way home. Ian was concerned about breaking up into characters again. I was afraid of the mirrors in my own home.

I decided to paint over all of my mirrors. I painted a landscape on the one I used to sit in front of to eat. I avoided the other one and
when I found myself staring and getting lost in it, I recited what Ian had told me: “It's a reflection. It's caused by light bouncing from you onto the glass and being bounced back by the silver on the back of the glass and into your eyes so that you see a picture.”

It was hard to hold onto the logic when your perception told you it was another moving version of you. But in spite of the illusion, reciting the logic was beginning to work, if only because it confirmed my commitment to ending the emotional addiction. It always broke the compulsion. Closeness, awareness, and self: these were the weapons against the addiction of the mirror world, for in the mirror world there were none of these things.

I
sat in a living room talking to a pianist. There was talk of a film based on
Nobody Nowhere
, and the book had contained poems and lyrics from songs I had written. We had gotten together at his home to work on some music I had written that could be used for the film. The pianist had been blind from early infancy and now had glass eyes. I spoke to him about being meaning-blind. I talked to him about seeing objects without meaning. He talked to me of depth of meaning without seeing. I talked to him about not knowing where my body is in space consistently without checking it by finding my reflection, tapping myself, or watching someone's reactions. His experiences were the inverse of this. Without sight, his outer body sense and sense of self in space was not easy but his inner body sense was something consistent he felt very sure of.

I spoke of being deaf to my own words, of hearing my voice in the echo on the end of each word that left my mouth, my mind often unaware I was making sense. I spoke of loving to wear bells because then I can always hear where I am. I spoke of merging into the person I was with. I spoke of how long it had taken to find any sense of my own self, identity, and personality because becoming others was my way of experiencing them as well as the disappearance of my selfhood.

I spoke to him about the shifts between self and other that left me feeling like little more than a pair of disembodied eyes and ears. I came to understand a sort of inner body sense that persists in the absence of functional sight, hearing, and touch.