My self and the gypsy.

A few years back a gypsy convinced me  my eyes are wide windows with no curtains. She force fed me odd tasting sugar cookies and made me wash them down with a royal blue liquid that burned my throat. She told me, 

"Everything is in your eyes. 

Blink often or the world will know your secrets, girl." 

Her hair was black when I met her, her eyes a boring brown and her teeth the worst shade of yellow. By the end of the night though her hair looked more red, her eyes more black, and her teeth that bright white that you can't help but think of death when you see. Still, her words scared me more than her appearance. I couldn't allow the world such an easy access to my secrets. I wouldn't. I devoted all of my time to evading any sort of eye contact; sunglasses, hiding behind my hair, looking elsewhere and soon enough it became second nature to me. Eventually I stopped looking myself in the eye- afraid to know my own secrets- and mirrors reflected nothing more than a faceless body. Ultimately, I lost my self in a looking glass and realized how terrified I was to find my self again. For so long I was just a body, existing and functioning in the most basic and simple ways possible, barely getting by: never letting my mind wander to where my self might be. Then it happened.

It was a rainy day- the kind where there's water everywhere- and I could feel the lifeless reflection of what was left of me following me around everywhere; in windows, in puddles, on the sides of cars. Everywhere I turned: me, me, me, me, me. I couldn't ignore it for much longer so I walked and walked and walked as aimlessly as possible, vacantly staring into the palms of my own hands. I was so used to walking with my head down I thought nothing of it this particular day. It was normal. Comfortable. Safe. But the harder it rained the faster I walked and the faster I walked the more mindless and unaware I became. Eventually I walked right into someone else and looked up just in time to meet their surprisingly comforting gaze. What I saw in their eyes was the self I was sure I had lost; pure, lost, and hurt but beautiful all the same. For once in my life I found myself unable to blink. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think. I couldn't do anything but stare and wonder why that gypsy had such an everlasting effect on me. In that instance I cursed her existence and wished nothing but death and unhappiness on her. She ruined me- destroyed the perfectly imperfect person I was becoming- and she did it well. 

Shaking off the rain and the suppressing the hate that boiled in every pore of my body, I finally made myself blink. Almost instantly I lost my reflection in their eyes and I was able to appreciate the person who had unintentionally ignited one of the most liberating moments of my life. I was still unable to speak though. In fact, all I could do was blink over and over and over. Before I realized they were laughing, a perfect white radiated from their mouth and I heard a sound that I now recognize as laughter. As they slowly blinked and returned their gaze to mine their laughter stopped and they spoke ten simple words, 

"You really shouldn't blink so much, you have gorgeous eyes." 

And with that they walked away, leaving me to stare openly into the rain., Into the windows. Into the future.