Sliding Into Myself

The old bad habit begins: I approach the mirror from the right, a cautious sideways slide into my own reflection.
First, just my head and shoulder appear — a dark brown eye registering shock, then settling into uncomfortable acknowledgment.
This was how I learned to see myself: not head-on, but in partial glimpses.
Not whole. Not welcome. Not right.

As a child, I performed this dance daily.
I crept toward the mirror like a trespasser, each movement tentative, measured, waiting for rejection to leap from the glass.
When my full face emerged, I would squeeze my eyes shut, a defense against the foreignness that stared back.
Sometimes I blinked rapidly, as if the blur between open and closed could soften the sharp edges of my existence, could reshape my face into something easier to love.
The mirror became a battleground: perception against self-perception, truth against longing.

I grew up a "brown" girl in a white family, a white town, a white narrative.
Mirrors — for others a simple reflection — held a relentless, complicated witness for me.
Every glance exposed the silence wrapped around my origins, my race, my difference.
In that glass, I was both mystery and mistake.

For decades, I mastered the art of avoidance.
I arranged my life in angles and sidelong glances, learning to glimpse myself only when necessary, only when shielded by soft lighting or distraction.
The mirror stayed an adversary, an untrustworthy friend.
If I didn’t look too closely, maybe I could belong.

But belonging built on blindness is no belonging at all.
And so — slowly, painfully, inevitably — I learned to stay.
To look.
To see.

Now, when I enter the dance studio for hip-hop class, the mirror spans the entire wall.
There is no sliding in from the side.
There is only stepping forward, planting my feet, and meeting my reflection head-on.
Brown skin radiant under fluorescent lights. Curly hair no longer pressed flat. Eyes steady, claiming the space they fill.

I no longer slide into the mirror.
I slide straight into myself — a Black woman, whole and unafraid.

I look directly into my own gaze now.
I smile at her.
She smiles back.

I am not an accident.
I am not a mistake.
I am here — fully, fiercely, finally — and I refuse to flinch at the sight of my own becoming.