Hello and Happy New Year Readers! It’s Co-editor Gail and this week I want to talk about a weird, freaky and honestly scary thing that happened to me last week.
Last Tuesday (well technically Wednesday) I was up really late as I have become even more of a night-owl since quarantine began. I decided to take a shower before bed.
It was meant to be a relaxing time, I was enjoying the hot water and the smell of my body wash as I thought about different media I watched throughout the day when suddenly and without warning I heard a sound that was so loud it made me scream like I was in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. When it finally stopped, I slowly moved the shower curtain to discover that…
The medicine cabinet mirror had BURST! It Shattered into countless pieces of various shapes and sizes, all with horribly jagged edges. They were everywhere!
In the sink, in the toilet, in my cat’s litter box, all over the floor and yes, in the bathtub with me!
I cannot stress enough how relieved and grateful I am that I (nor anyone else in my household) was hurt when this happened. It could have been a tragedy, but I was lucky enough to be standing in just the right spot to not get hit with any glass shards, nor did I step on any of it in the cleanup process. But it was still rattling and I keep thinking about how bad it could have been.
We don’t know why or how this happened. Perhaps there was an earthquake? Did the steam from my shower do something? Was there a small crack in the mirror we didn’t notice that led to the larger break? Is our apartment just haunted now? We’ll probably never know.
I went to bed that night with unwashed hair, feeling real spooked.
Now that it’s been a while and I have gotten over the initial shock, I’ve been trying to think what the mirror breaking like that might mean on some sort of spiritual or metaphorical level.
I’ve never really been a big believer of superstitions outside of one’s related to theatre. So is there any possibility that this was a good omen? Especially with it happening so close to New Years?
I know from growing up with American Friday the 13th beliefs that breaking a mirror means 7 years of bad luck, but none of us actually broke the mirror ourselves or were even looking into it when it broke (thank goodness). So I think our souls are okay.
In the world of my beloved theatre, mirrors are considered bad luck on stage, but that’s really more for scenic and lighting design reasons than actual misfortune.
I’m Jewish, and mirrors are meant to be covered up when we sit shiva in order to keep evil spirits away, but in weddings breaking glass is considered a traditional symbol of love. But of course I was behind the shower curtain, not under the chuppah.
Perhaps the best perspective I have found came from my boyfriend when I told him I was going to write about this experience for my blog this week.
He posits that perhaps the mirror exploding was a symbolic end to the general badness of 2020. One last shockingly awful thing to happen before the fresh start of 2021.
I think this is how I am going to view it. I’m going to do my best to stay hopeful and believe that despite the things I will not be able to change, I will survive, and perhaps 2021 will be a better and maybe even a bit of a lucky year.
Gail Bello is a poet and playwright from Waltham, Massachusetts. She graduated in 2019 with a BFA in Creative Writing and a minor in Theatre from The University of Maine at Farmington. Find her previous publications at https://thaumaturgedramaturge.wordpress.com and follow her on Twitter @AquajadeGail