Sullivan's Guide to Radical Self-Compassion

               Sullivan never saw himself until he was eight years old, and by then it was much too late. He grew up in a mirrorless household, because his mother found them vain. She always looked perfect, so it was never much of a problem for her, and mirrors might have an adverse effect on the child’s ego. Nothing could be worse for mental development, Sullivan’s mother confided in a friend one evening, then access to vanity. Vanity, she said, was the root of evil, and must be prevented whenever possible. For instance, she continued to her friend, consider the woman walking past on the street.

               “What about her?” asked the friend reluctantly. They weren’t very good friends.

               “Her makeup is smeared. She’s just realized that people on the street are staring, and she’ll lean down and look in the window to fix it,” said Sullivan’s mother, who’s name was Elaine. They were sitting in a booth in a trendy but refined restaurant. The windows were darkly tinted on the outside, affording the patrons of the restaurant license to indulge in their voyeuristic urges over expensive food.

               “Fixing makeup isn’t so bad,” said the friend as the woman put her hands on her knees and gazed into the middle distance above Elaine’s booth.

               “Well sure, it starts with fixing things, and that isn’t so bad,” Elaine said fairly. “But watch, it doesn’t stop there.”

               The woman futzed carefully with her lipstick, dabbing at it with a kerchief and reapplying it.

               “Vanity comes in, look,” Elaine said wisely. The friend watched.

               The woman tossed her hair, which curled at the shoulder. She smiled at her own reflection and tilted her head. A pair of men walked by, distracted by her. One of them spanked her, and the other whistled and applauded in admiration. She tipped onto the glass. With her face mashed into the window, the woman was able to see through, and discovered, to her extreme embarrassment, the two women in the booth who had been observing her, as well as a number of other diners who had set down their silverware to see what was the commotion. The woman pushed herself away, lip curled to prevent tears, and strode off, head down. She walked into a pole, fell on her bottom hard, and sobbed. It was all too much for her.

               Elaine looked at her friend, and her face said everything. It’s just how the world is, said Elaine’s face. The friend’s face provided no argument.

               Sullivan’s mother despised the office building windows of Chicago, considering them an unfit environment for the raising of a child, and moved to a backcountry town in the woods up north. Trees and the earth did not reflect one’s image, and were thus

designated suitable for little Sullivan. Elaine’s Chicago money, tightly crammed into a luxury high rise apartment in the Loop, was given the freedom to become a 5 bedroom 6,000 square foot Unit 4 in the suburbs of Nowhere, within convenient driving distance of a gas station, a Piggly Wiggly, a fast food restaurant, an adult superstore-gun shop combo, and an old forest whose beech trees had all died the year prior because of some kind of invasive insect.

               The house was mostly empty, and felt small for its vastness because it didn’t have mirrors to double its rooms as ordinary houses do. Elaine had tossed them all out upon moving in. She had neighbors, whom she didn’t speak with much.

               When he was old enough, Sullivan went out to sit in the cul de sac every day, under Elaine’s watchful eye. The other children Sullivan’s age weren’t allowed because it's dangerous to play in the street, and the other children older than Sullivan were smart enough to know that there’s not much playing that can be done in a cul de sac populated only by a thick lamppost and two small blue spruce trees.

               After it rained, other children were not allowed to splash in puddles because they might catch a cold, and instead watched enviously as Sullivan tore through the water with his rain boots, leaving no puddle undisturbed. This was a risk that Elaine allowed because it encouraged Sullivan towards anti-vanity. He was a beautiful child, which was dangerous. If he looked once, it would be difficult to stop.

               One summer day Sullivan got a mirror. It was his eighth birthday, and he had still never looked into a puddle, only marveled joyously at the sound they made when he splashed them. Sometimes he wished he could look. Most times he didn't.

               Storm clouds were building not far away. Lightning struck silently, accompanied shortly after by thunder. A car rounded the corner onto their street, quickly.

               “Sullivan! It’s time to come in!” called Elaine.

               “Okey-dokey, Mom!” came the reply. He was holding an apple from a neighbor's tree, a fruit he had never had before. Sullivan felt the first sprinkled drops of the storm touch his face and reached out his arms palms up to feel them. He closed his eyes.

               CRACK! Lightning struck the car suddenly with vicious ferocity, hot white and angry. Elaine recoiled and yelped.

               “Sullivan, run!”

               Sullivan opened his eyes, startled, and did not run. The car, swerving wildly, careened up onto the cul de sac, flattened one of the spruces, and bounced off the lamp post, narrowly dodging Sullivan. The lamppost took off the car’s rear view mirror, which plopped into Sullivan’s ready arms. It flew across the street and crumpled against the corner of a garage.

               It took Sullivan a long moment to understand the mirror. A beautiful creature lived in it. He looked around, unsure of himself. Elaine was rushing to the crashed car. He heard her shouting distantly. The rain fell hard and noiselessly. His vision tunneled in on the creature in the mirror. He raised the apple to his mouth. The creature followed suit with its lovely arm. The two bit into the apple simultaneously with a world-colliding, clean, crisp, crunch. The fruit flooded his mouth with sensation, the sound of yelling and rain returned to his ears, he felt cold and hot, and he felt naked, and he was open to the creature’s perverse eye, vulnerable to it, and all at once he understood. He saw his beauty. He saw the awe in his eyes. A shiver went down his spine. It started to pour, and Sullivan did not move. The curve of his cheekbone fascinated him. The slenderness of his eyebrows fascinated him. The asymmetry of his nose fascinated him. The redness in his lips fascinated him. He could see himself as he saw others. With another chill, he realized that this body in the mirror was also what others saw of him, and everyone became human.

               He fell in love.

               “Sullivan!” cried Elaine. “Go in! Get inside!”

               He ran. He had to hide the mirror, he had to hide his face, God, his face! Cold wind and water whipped around it lithely, rolling across its curves, kissing its nose gently. One of his tears lifted up in the wind and was carried away. Faces were art, Sullivan thought, and the mirror a medium. He hugged the mirror close to his chest and ran inside.

               The driver of the car escaped with her life and a severe facial disfigurement.

               Sullivan never left home without a mirror from then on. Obviously his mother couldn’t know anything about it, so he shattered the rear view mirror and carried one of the sharp pieces in his pocket, framed by duct tape. Every chance he could he stole glances at himself, even at risk of being seen at the act by his mother. He also collected other mirrors whenever he could get them. The next one was an old makeup mirror he found in the gutter, which quickly became his favorite. He kept the original mirror in a drawer in his room.

               As he grew up his mother couldn’t protect him from the dangers of the world. He eventually grew tall enough to glimpse himself in the tinted windows of parked cars (though he had to be careful not to be seen doing this by his mother), and, of course, there were public bathrooms. Elaine only allowed Sullivan to enter these under dire circumstances, though they weren’t particularly alluring to him. He felt dirty when he saw himself in the mirror, and naked when strangers saw him do it, so he kept his head down when he washed his hands. He never saw that they were looking too.

               “Sullivan?”

               “Hello, are you Elena?” Sullivan cringed, realizing for the first time the similarity the girl's name had to his mother’s.

               “Yeah, hi!” Elena sat down. She was bubbly. It made Sullivan uncomfortable.

               “I ordered a drink already, I hope you don’t mind.” There was a window next to his table, and he caught himself stealing glances.

               “Not at all.” She peered outside curiously and unselfconsciously, looking for whatever it was Sullivan was eyeing. Finding nothing, she turned back to Sullivan.

               “Your makeup is really pretty,” Sullivan said, and blushed.

               “Gosh, thank you. Most guys don’t, you know… talk about that. I think they think it makes them less shallow or something.” She put a hand on his.

               “Can I ask a question?” he asked.

               “Sure.”

               “How do you… how do you put it on, without looking in a mirror?” He looked down and withdrew his hand.

               “I… you just use a mirror. I don’t understand.”

               “Me neither.”

               Elena snorted. “Maybe I can help with that.”

               Sullivan looked up.

               They were in his front hall.

               “Let’s go to your room,” Elena said.

               “It’s just my room.” Sullivan worked at something in the carpet with the toe of his shoe.

               “I think bedrooms are the most important place in a home. It’s like you in

miniature, an allegory of the heart. You leave shame at the door, and you only bring in the people you trust.” Sullivan didn’t speak. “So do you trust me?”

               “If rooms are an allegory for the heart I’d hate for anyone to witness mine.” Her face did not change. Evidently this was not a satisfactory answer. “Okay, fine.”

               Sullivan’s stomach dropped and his heart beat quickly when he opened the door. It glided in a graceful arc without a sound and revealed his bedroom. It was multiple in and of itself.

               Elena let out a breath of awe and stepped into the center. The bed was in the center, and the walls, the ceiling, and the floor were so entirely covered with mirrors that they impeded on each other, overlapping and competing for space in a repeating, infinite kaleidoscope. Sullivan sat down on the bed. Above it was a large mirror in the shape of a heart, ringed by soft lights. He turned his back to Elena and looked at her through the mirrors.

               “It’s beautiful,” she said.

               “I’m ashamed.”

               “There are no secrets. I can see everything about me and everything about you.”

               “...Everything?” Sullivan shifted embarrassedly.

               “Everything,” Elena said. She placed a hand gently over her crotch and looked at Sullivan, then herself, in the mirror. Sullivan stole a glance, then turned away. She sat down behind Sullivan and put her chin on his shoulder, legs parting around him.

               “So you want to know how I put on makeup?” she asked. Sullivan nodded. Elena scooched forward so that not a part of her front wasn’t pressed onto his back.

               She reached into her purse and pulled out lipstick and uncapped it. She pressed it onto his lips, sliding it over the lower, and then the upper. He trembled.

               “All done,” whispered Elena into his ear. “You look beautiful.” Sullivan reached up and touched his lips with a finger gently.

               “I do.”

              Elena traced his lips with her forefinger, then cupped his cheek with her palm. He let her part his lips, he tasted her and she was sweet, he saw her and he saw himself and he cried and fell in love again.

               It was four minutes past midnight.