Married Women Who Look in the Mirror

And say this to themselves, “may need a divorce”

I wish I were an anomaly.

The only girl who looked in a mirror and had this thought.

“Who are you and what have you done with her?”

The following is an excerpt from my story The Naked Mistress. If you can relate you may need a divorce. Or maybe you are one of the lucky ones who are happily married.

But gave herself away to something or someone else.

Until you became unrecognizable even to yourself.

Excerpt: The Naked Mistress

I throw the covers aside and walk into the bathroom.

A nice, hot bath will be my comfort.

I twist the faucet on one side and then another.

The rush of water fills the tub.

I turn from the bath towards the vanity. I slide the drawer and fumble for a hair tie. I grab one and stop. My hands rest on the cold marble. I catch myself in the mirror. My stance is frigid as someone other than myself stares back at me.

This is not my reflection.

This is not Colleen.

“Who is this chick?” I think. I do not recognize her.

I rationalize it’s the twenty pounds I have put on in my recent misery, but I know better. It’s painful to stare at. The water pools behind me. The cathartic sound pulls me towards the refuge of the tub.

But the mirror grabs me back.

It is as hostile as the waiting water is safe.

I have been denying the image that has been staring back at me.

The mirror seems to know this. Seemingly, alive with the whispers of Snow White. “Mirror, mirror on the wall,” I think. No, I don’t want to know what the mirror sees.

I don’t want it peering into my hollow shell. Into the emptiness inside of me. How had I surrendered the best parts of me so willingly until this was all I had left? Secretly, I know the answer.

I had been desperate for my husband to grow with me.

I had wished, I had prayed, I had begged, I had screamed and I had prayed again for him to get help and save our broken marriage.

Ralph refused.

He didn’t believe he had any faults.

He stopped marriage counseling once the therapist arrived at the point of self-reflection. I continued on in counseling by myself. And the marital divide kept widening.

It had led me to this lonely image staring back at me.

Sadly, I had fought hard for this reflection.

Colleen the fixer and the pleaser had ignored the warnings there would be no marital resolution. This emotionally skeletal woman standing before me had lost her way because of it.

I had been fighting Ralph to be valued, not dismissed.

To be a priority and be respected.

To be best friends and a team again.

It had started inside of me.

Little joys were disappearing.

I had covered this pretty well at first.

Then it crawled outside of me and became harder to conceal. And then the inside and outside waged a war where weight was gained, bitterness set in, and the shape of my heart was irrevocably distorted.

War isn’t pretty.

And what was staring back at me was anything but.

I could feel the coldness of battle in Ralph’s words.

“You started the war Colleen and you’re not going to win it.” I would shake my head with sadness and say, “Ralph love is not a war, and if you believe there is winning and losing in love, you have already lost.”

Who could have guessed after hearing him say this so many times…

I would unconsciously wage a war upon myself?

At this moment, with this unrecognizable outline staring back at me in the mirror it was stunningly, shockingly, and outrageously clear that I was losing my own personal internal combat.

With all wars, there is a time to surrender.

I was a fighter.

I loved my husband, I loved my children, and the family we were.

But Ralph and I were fighting for two different things.

He was fighting me and I was fighting for him. I warned him to be careful about trying to win his declared war because he might find out he wouldn’t be winning at all. He would be losing everything that’s valuable.

The water continues to rush.

The mirror is splattered with toothpaste and makeup. Though in between I can still recognize the physical distortion of my emotional emptiness.

The unrecognizable outline of me. I know this, I see this, I just can’t accept this. Nothing bubbles or brews below my surface only the bathwater behind me.

I hold onto the sink as if my emotional weakness needs physical support.

My heart muffled, my joy held hostage, my face the canvas for this portrait.

I am an unwilling participant bound to a body that has lost itself. I think back to something my uncle told me, “Colleen,” he said, “You have had the gift of joy your whole life. Don’t let another human being take it from you.”

I grab my shirt as the water overtakes the tub.

I am ready to submerge into the bath.

Yet, I now find it hard to move.

Foolish naïve Colleen, the fixer, has now lost her best friend Ralph AND herself. I am suddenly immobilized. A cavalcade of anger accompanies my realization.

I want the tub.

I move forward with intent.

But I still hear the words, the truth the mirror.

I am completely naked now. All my physical and emotional clothing is shed. I am cold. I am shivering. I am uncomfortable. I am frightened. My unadorned body exposes the truth.

“Who are you?” I think. “Where have you put her? She can’t really be gone. How did you misplace her completely?”

“Give them back,” I demand! I scream for the lines that once accompanied my face. The happy wrinkles.

The curled-up smiles and eye-crunching laughs.

I hang my head and sob, “Give her back! I want her back!” I yell at the mirror and scream in the third person. After all, I am her! I am the one I am yelling for, but I speak as if she is absent.

Because she is.

I want the girl whose mom endearingly said was full of “Joie de Vivre.” It is a likely moniker for the youngest of five. An Irish lass who’s told her eyes smile as she does.

A happy girl her entire life…until now.

This is when I spot her again. She darts briefly through the mirror. I say her because she no longer looks like me. She is the person I have misplaced.

She is the child of her youth. The carefree girl who runs freely through the fields of the country outside of metropolitan Washington, D.C. I recognize her.

She plucks a buttercup and playfully swipes it past her chin not waiting for its answer. Of course, it’s yellow. She abandons the flower for the next thing in her path. A horse. She throws herself on its back and takes it to the nearest fence.

A reckless thing for this typically cautious girl.

The water in the creek is wet and familiar and she knows she is nearing home.

She runs up the hill she would rather be sliding down.

She rounds the property and finds a turtle. A grand day indeed. Her young soul feels this. Love is everywhere. She rests the turtle in a waiting box and bolts through the dining room door.

She is home.

And home is a thing of beauty.

It is the best of times. Her cherished uncle and older siblings sit scrunched beside one another laughing around the dining room table. Her mom who she will lose far too young grins from the kitchen while pouring out love in her familiar language.

Food and more food, people and more people they are all welcome.

Her Irish mother calls it the loaves and the fishes, she doesn’t know a stranger.

Family is an insurmountable joy, a treasure.

Life is good for this young girl. At night, she grabs her Mickey Mouse diary and pens a few thoughts. She grabs a book and snuggles into bed. Her single mother says goodnight with a butterfly kiss.

And then the rush of water. Is it the creek? No, it’s the bathtub water breaking the glass in the mirror. I am back in the moment.

The naked moment.

Staring at the mistress who has cheated on me.

The dark circles under my eyes are evidence of the secret they carry.

I am looking at myself honestly for the first time in years. Taking a long, deep, distressing, disturbing, difficult, and daring look at my naked self.

Who would want this out-of-shape body? I certainly don’t. The pain that had started in my heart now exited every essence of my being. My physical presence now oozes blotches, bumps, and bulges. It rejects the notion of my Jersey Shore bikini only two years before.

My heart is hiding from me.

Through my nakedness, I can see it. My sad, broken exhausted, and now fragile heart. It’s whimpering. While I had been fixing, rescuing, pleasing, and avoiding it began to hemorrhage. It needs me. It’s begging for a full plate to save it from starvation.

I hadn’t cared for it properly, I let it get terribly out of shape. The man sitting one room away didn’t value it. It was my responsibility to feed and exercise this muscle.

I, the golden-haired girl who chased ponies and turtles.

Who dodged bumblebees while jumping past long-forgotten tree trunks.

Who caught fireflies and stared at the moon from my cool grass-lined perch. And who ran wildly because love chased after me. I ran just far enough away from home to know I was free and close enough to never forget who I was.

A flower-filled buttercup.

But now my golden hair has turned dark.

I no longer chase fireflies and bumblebees though I do stop to help the occasional turtle or anyone who needs me. The older Colleen stays closer to home. There is no longer the elasticity of love permitting the day trips of my youth. Ralph doesn’t exude it.

Why has this young girl run by me in the mirror?

I am still holding for Life’s call.

I am looking at myself honestly for the first time in years. Taking a long deep, distressing, disturbing, difficult, and daring look at my naked self. Naked I could be honest with myself.

I slide into the bath remembering who I once was and who I’ve become.

A bolt of warmth comforts my shivering, misshaped, middle-aged frame. The bath provides temporary respite. I’ve rediscovered that beauty resides in a well-kept heart.

Clothing has been covering my pain.

The mirror is screaming at me.

Self-discovery is often accompanied by resistance. I am struggling in my marriage because I am resisting other truths. I’m not rescuing my husband. I’m abandoning myself.

I have to re-emerge.

I need to necessitate a buttercup smile.

As the water tempers my pain, I sort through myself honestly.

I gaze back at the glass.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest mistress of them all?”

• *Below you will find Chapters One, Two, and Three of The Naked Mistress, A memoir of a woman resurrected.

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