I sometimes think vampires have it easy.

OK, so everyone fears and loathes them. But they always look good and never have to look in a mirror. In fact they can’t. Lucky vampires.

I tend not to look in mirrors after I’ve done my hair and make-up and checked the lumpiness factor of whatever I’m wearing (or should I say, whether my clothes disguise the lumpiness factor). After that, I do my best to avoid mirrors entirely until bed-time. That way I can preserve a mental image of myself looking neat and in control.

Of course, it can and does backfire. One year, at end of year review time, I took a train to meet my line manager. End of year reviews involve extolling one’s own virtues, justifying and analysing one’s actions etc. For an introvert, this is a fairly agonising process, but has to be done. After several years of it, I’ve got used to the drill. For a while I sat on the train reading what I’d prepared and then worked, editing some paperwork with a red pen. A young couple got on board and started looking round for seats. The train was busy and they were going to be separated. So I picked up my things and offered to move so they could sit together. Naturally, this altruistic move was accompanied by everything slipping. Rather than arising in one swift, sophisticated move, I got up in a tangle of bags, papers, coats and self. Without saying thank-you the young couple got down to canoodling while I concentrated on organising myself for the review.

At the office, I went to the loo and washed my hands etc in order to give my inner actress time to emerge for her annual performance. I purposely ignored the mirror because I didn’t want my confidence to be diminished by discovering that my hair was a mess, that I’d rubbed off half my eye make-up and that I looked podgy and vague. Imagining myself immaculate and confident, I then walked in to the room where my line manager was, primed to blow my own trumpet for ten minutes or so. ‘I have done a difficult job for several months and am finally moving forward. I am an efficient and conscientious employee. I am…’

‘Why have you drawn all over your face?’ said my line manager.

Turned out that while moving seats in the train, my red editing pen was pointing the wrong way and I had scribble all over my right cheek.

After that did I start looking in mirrors more often? No.

Is this because I’m convinced that I always look immaculate, confident and sophisticated? No.

I know what I look like really.

Do I wish I looked different? Well of course I do. I wish I looked younger, prettier, slimmer, less grey, taller. I see photographs of myself and sigh. I stand next to my lovely daughter in her trendy clothes and mourn for my long lost youthful figure.

But then I think to myself… even when I was young and slim and not grey, I still wished I looked different. The long long lost youthful figure was generally cluttered up with frumpy clothes (partly because of prevailing fashion and partly because of lack of confidence). My hair was tortured with perms (again partly because of prevailing fashion but also because I thought it was too straight). I worried about make-up. I despaired. I looked too young and too short. Bits of my figure were out of proportion. No-one noticed the tiny waist because of the full bust. No-one would ever find me attractive. I would never be successful because I didn’t look right.

Have you seen the meme that says ‘I wish I was as fat as I was when I thought I was fat’? That’s me.

But now…when I do look in the mirror and see fine lines etc I make myself remember that I loved my grandmothers’ soft faces. When I look at my hands, I see all the words they’ve written, the stitches they’ve sewn, the meals they’ve cooked. I look at my rounded stomach which (short of major surgery) will never be what it was and remember the children it carried under my heart.

And this is the thing. Most of us look in mirrors and despair because we are always looking for something that’s not there and was never there. We are looking for the perfect person we think we ought to be. Virtually none of us put as high an expectation on anyone else.

Last weekend I was bride’s helper at a wonderful wedding in the Highlands of Scotland. I have known the bride since university. The other bride’s helpers were her sister, her oldest childhood friend and a mutual university friend. I hadn’t seen the sister or the childhood friend for well over twenty years. They looked almost exactly as I remembered them. Not because they still looked twenty-ish but because they looked themselves. I wasn’t searching for the signs of age, I was scanning their faces for someone I’d once known. Talking to them, I found that like me, they were the same and yet different. We are grown up.

So I’m not going to start looking in mirrors more. I know that sometimes I’ll look tired or sad or bad-tempered but I can rise above it; sometimes (more often than not probably) my hair and make-up won’t be quite right but who will remember except me?

I’m an older woman who’s had two children. I will never look nineteen again. Why do I want to look nineteen? I don’t want to be nineteen.

I am happy to risk pen on my face if I can mostly maintain a mental image of myself as ‘looking OK’.

And as for vampires, well perhaps they’re missing out. Or maybe not. I’m still a little jealous.

Words and photograph copyright 2017 by Paula Harmon. All rights belong to the author and material may not be copied without the author’s express permission