Have you ever seen a woman after she’s left a relationship that went on for years?  She blinks her eyes as though emerging from a deep sleep.  She looks at her skin and says “How long has it been since I looked at my skin?  It’s like parchment.” She looks at her hair and says “How long has it been since I looked at my hair?  It’s like black coils shot through with silver.” Then she looks at her clothes and says “I don’t know how to dress in this new day and age. I don’t know how to talk to people.  I don’t know what to do with myself when I go home.”

After spending some time trudging through these new sensations, her back becomes bent and her step begins to hobble. When this happens, she tells you that she’s going to find a way back so she can fall asleep again.  It’s like letting go off Eurydice and watching her spiral back into darkness.  Oh, you can try to talk to her.  You can say “You’ve been trying to make it work with him for years, and you end up unhappy.  You end up leaving.  Or he leaves you.  Maybe it’s time to move on.” And she says (or doesn’t say, but says it all the same): “I don’t have the years left to move on.  I don’t know how to dress or talk.  Love isn’t fun.  Love isn’t easy.  If you want love, you have to work.  Work.  Work.  Work.  Work.  Work.”

And you can’t make her understand that she’s glancing at the blurry sides of a magnifying glass instead of looking directly into the center of its clarity.  That fear tricks her into curling up and hunching over her knees when she ought to be breaking open like a shell.  That her mirror is a chattering, mocking portrait of Dorian Gray telling her lies.  That if she was able to backflip outside of herself, like a brand-new ghost doing ecstatic cartwheels, she’d catch a glimpse of herself full in the face and realize that she’s never looked younger.