© the school for excellence 2013 free online resources at www.tsfx.com.au

Life Writing – Creative Piece

I can only see myself through the mirror. See my straight black hair tinged with burgundy

tones. See it growing longer every day; see myself changing a little more each day. Without

the mirror, my being becomes an ambiguous form in my mind, seen but unable to see,

unfastened from my sight and recognition. My mirror is the overarching structure that makes

definition possible.

I like to think of my mother as that mirror; the mirror through which I see, and am seen.

My mother was born in 1970; the youngest of seven, she was the delicate trinket in my

grandfather’s eyes, his “beauty queen”.

In 1990, my twenty year old mother married a man nineteen years her senior. He was a

promising Japanese business owner and seemed to offer escape from her bleak poverty.

He offered fresh air instead of the stratified smog she had breathed the past twenty years.

Yet, in 1998, when she was not even thirty, my mother boarded a plane with a ticket paid for

in her Japanese husband’s money, one that would separate her from him for over seventeen

years.

During the time between their annual visits, betrayal scorched the bed sheets. Both wife and

husband indulged in perfidious intimacies. Both wife and husband fooled not only

themselves but the girl, now nearing adulthood, who had begun to trace their footsteps.

It was nearly a decade ago when I was twelve that I finally awoke to the reality of dad’s

absence, to the reality of mother’s men, to the realisation that he wasn’t the first, and would

not be the last. I was twelve when I first hated a stranger enough to dream of wielding a

knife into his dirty flesh and suture the mouth that whispered sickening words of seduction.

I promised myself to never be like my mother. I promised to never hurt anyone the way she

hurt me, to never betray someone the way she did.

Lies.

Some few years later he would whisper, “You’re just like your mom”, as we lay in his bed,

cuddling our secrets and the emotions that had taken hold of us.

© the school for excellence 2013 free online resources at www.tsfx.com.au

“…I am.” I would reply, as I thought of sneaking out of the house, of the hushed

conversations and laughter, and remembered how it used to be. I thought of rekindling

something that we both should have forgotten, but couldn’t seem to. I thought of the other

that was asleep, the one that would never know.

I thought of what I had done, but I couldn’t find an answer to “Why?”

I will never truly know what went on between my mother and father, what brought her to that

decision to take me and leave the country. Under the guise of “education”, I’ve heard

stories of another woman, a mistress. I didn’t know what to believe.

Over the years, I’ve heard from both woman and husband, but I still don’t know what to

believe. Their real story is still encrypted within their confabulated words.

ButI know my mother is a kindly woman who was torn between a love that she couldn’t be

with and the security of a man’s warmth. Do I hold the right to condemn her for wanting a

modicum of happiness? For wanting the comfort and companisoonship other women have,

but of which she was deprived. My mother is fractured, between two hearts, two lives.

I recall that morning when I told him, “I wish there were two of me”; two of me to cater to the

two men I cared for.

I never understood my mother before, but if experience is what it takes to truly understand, I

was beginning to.

I still struggle over what happened between that man and I. I still don’t know why I did what I

did. In this penumbra, the fear that haunts me is fate.

My mother reached out for another to find in her life a shred of joy, love and security. Yet

when she reached out she cast her shadows upon her twelve year old child. Now, nearly a

decade later, will I be fated to that life? Am I inescapably tied to a pre-existing existence?

Can I not make my own?

Somewhere along the spectrum of Time, you came. The first time we met, I was, on the

surface, perfectly together. The next time we met I was escaping that “perfectly together” life

and recklessly undoing the knotted me.

You came as a validation, letting me know that I can still redeem myself from the image of

my mother. Whilst others told me “You’re just like her”, you looked into my eyes and said:

© the school for excellence 2013 free online resources at www.tsfx.com.au

“Our parents are like spectral shadows, but we can step out from what the parent projects.”

I now realise the diacritic between mirrors and shadows. My mother is both the mirror and

the shadow. When I look back, the mirror reflects back a clearer image, a defined being. But

even without it I can still see; my mind’s eye, not my mirror makes seeing possible. As I turn

away, she is the silhouetting shadow cast before me. However, it is my own steps forward

that I take- ones that she may ink, but not compose.

That was all you needed to say, to inspire me to step the first step towards the illuminated

world, away from what my own mother was unintentionally imprinting upon me.

Two years ago, I had Hope etched in cursive, black ink on my right wrist. Two years later,

you have etched those fading letters with renewed colour into my life. The Hope from the

past rejuvenated by this Hope we give each other in our present, urging us to walk forward

into a future we have yet to write ourselves, but may do so together.

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