I am a mirror trick. Most generally, when people think of the phenomenon of a person vanishing into thin air, magic certainly is considered first and for most. In fact, the connection has become so prominent that when someone disappears, the say has come about that they “pulled a Houdini”. Magic is wonderful; it serves no purpose other than to entertain and delight an audience, an audience who often never questions the magic, or even cares to know that magic is all tricks and illusions. I am an illusion; I am the magician.
The most common methods used by magicians to turn something “invisible” involve using mirrors to create an illusion. Magicians cleverly adjust several frames of mirrors to create the appearance of a wider open space than actual exists in an area; the mirrors, then, instead of simply covering what must vanish, pull the light and images contiguous to the invisible item to veil it with a false cloak of the surrounding atmosphere. And poof. It’s gone, the audience applauds and the magician bows.
I am an illusion; I can’t ever expose myself, for my colors give me away, and my shape is far too discernible. I hide behind mirrors that reflect only the visions others give me; the smiles they wish to see; the person they wish to see. In truth, none have seen me in my actual form; few hardly know my shades. None, however, are concerned to know and rightly avoid discovering it, as I elude their finding out. After all, I fear that, after all their praise of my false self, they would be displeased with what remains masked; they are content with the illusions.
I prefer to be invisible for everyone’s benefit. After all, truth is stressful; ignorance is bliss. It is just better, for now, that I evade the struggles of explaining myself to an audience who would be reluctant to accept me; the true me.
Yet I do recognize the negative effects my tricks have borne on my character: I am a reclusive little introvert who shudders at human contact and dreads likewise judgment of even my invisible-form. I am not proud of this, but only for the reason that pride would be too forward a sentiment. Invisibility has contorted me this way; it is far easier to conceal my true form with solid, confining walls than with my fragile, intangible mirrors. It takes much effort to keep my mirrors in place after all: I must be constantly adjusting them; I must be so careful. I’ve not yet broken a mirror, but I know the fright of cracking their glass; the glass is so thin.
My family loves me so very much; it must be thus hard to believe that I have great difficulty in abstaining antagonism or preventing my distance. Only I am to blame for this: veritably, I show not even them anything but mirrors. So they don’t understand that their conversational themes or tone to me, or even that their perceived fulfillment of my desires is distasteful, disappointing, frustrating.
But what could I do? I was spending the week at my grandparents’ house, and all the empty interest and fake smiles were unrelenting in tiring me out. The adjustments made to my mirrors left me sore in places, and I was forced to continue to draw the frames closer and closer into me with the passing of the days. I was so, returned to my parents worn, and in a mood of bitterness, for their inability to understand, and animosity, for myself, who could not explain. Exhausted, I misguided my mirrors so that the scratched against one another: I complained about what to me was an arduous week, and demanded reprieve from dinner early to pass the evening in my room, which provoked them into exasperated frustrations about my lack of community. I could not placate them with the little energy I had, and the unwillingness to do so brought on by the fatigue, and so the crack formed in my mirror. I rebuked them for their support as parents as they promised me payment for any college it seemed, except the one I fully sought after. They couldn’t, however, accept that I more than deign to dedicate my future to art, and thus dismissed my blatant request to dedicate my education to it. I holed up in my room, to repair my crack with the strength I had reserved. Poof. I was gone again.
Mind you, of many instances, this is just one example; I have willingly shown others parts of the construction behind my illusion and even bore a few holes in my own glass that they might see me through it; and the result was all the same: I was not to do it again, lest I perturb them with the reality of my form. I must please the crowds. Besides, I love the crowds; if they clap, laugh and jeer in the presence of my illusion then who am I to ruin the magic and spoil it for them? My audience only wishes to be entertained, that is all they ask, and they care more about remaining mystified than learning how I perform the trick. I oblige them: I just bow. A magician never reveals her secrets, no matter how much she desires to.
Invisibility is just as frightening as it is safe. I experience all: I think and feel, and I can see. But none see me, only reflections. That is who I am: a hidden form enclosed by reflections of the world in which I live. It wears on me, to realize this of myself: it is emptying to have such an identity. My identity: the secret and the lies. It is frightening that this is the constitution of my existence: an illusion; a mirror trick. I am invisible, but sometimes I feel as though I am vanishing too.
