Liberation, at last!

The other morning as I was lying in bed, I felt a strange lightness of being, as if I were iron filings and a magnet was brushing over me. At that point, I let my consciousness go free to research the sensation and surprisingly, it only made it as far as the bathroom cabinet.

Seven years ago I moved out of the apartment that housed Paulie, me, The Local and various in and out-of-town visitors and into a one bedroom apartment of my own. I didn’t have many possessions at the time. It didn’t take long to extract myself from one space and inject myself into the other. The move was incident free… until the crash.

I had never considered myself overly superstitious, or maybe it was just that I hadn’t overly considered superstitions, but when I slid the box of bathroom supplies onto the counter pushing the little two-sided vanity mirror off, it opened up a whole can of superstition worms I didn’t know existed.

OK, maybe I’m a little superstitious. I always knock on wood for me or anyone around me when a phrase is uttered that seems to challenge fate. When salt is spilled, I always throw a dash over my shoulder, and. I always go around a ladder rather than passing underneath. I do these things more for fun than out of fear. I consider little superstitions like this seasoning to a potentially bland life. But suffering the fate of a broken mirror, that was something I had never had to deal with. Not until that day seven years ago.

The memory comes in three phases: The mirror sliding off the counter, the explosion on impact, and then the cleaning up the shards of broken glass. Each of these comes with its own emotion: Annoyance that I didn’t move the mirror first, fear of what would happen when it hit the ground, and finally, bewilderment.

“Don’t cry over spilled milk” didn’t work for me as I brushed the shards into a pile. This was bigger than that. My rational mind came up with reasons for why this superstition started. Perhaps the fragmented reflection seen in the broken mirror sliced at the delicate psyche, taking seven years to heal. Maybe when the superstition was born mirrors were so expensive that they equaled seven years salary of the persons unlucky enough to break them? Whatever the reason, it was up to me to convince myself that it was only a superstition. I thought I was successful. The slices on my fingers healed in a matter of days, and I have felt pretty lucky over these past seven years. So what was it that left me the other morning? Was it something my subconscious was holding on to? Was it truly bad luck leaving? Does it really matter?

I don’t think it matters. They say our lives move in seven year cycles and when I look at mine, I can see this is true. I wouldn’t go back to that day and move the mirror. Whatever has happened, I’m happy for the lessons learned. That seven years of uneasiness will just make the next seven that much sweeter. Oh no, is that a black cat crossing my path.