why i hate mirrors
I wrote this shortly after my 27 birthday; and while I'm in a different place I wanted to post it here so I don't lose it. I'm sitting here reading a memoir from a Jewish boy who escaped the Soviet Union with his family in the late 1980s. I thought it would expand my mind, & my heart; put myself in another's very different shoes for a while. Maybe gain a little more insight into the history of the Ukraine I know & love so fiercely. I didn't think I could possibly relate. I didn't expect to find myself reflected. I didn't foresee having to move the book so the pages don't wrinkle--not from tears of empathy for his pain, but of familiarity. I didn't expect to hear I wasn't alone from such a vastly different experience. as he explains his self-loathing, his need to run from who he is. the journey of realizing the communist hatred for his ethnicity has become his own. as he talks about trying to run from himsel...