Mirror, mirror off the wall

We're forgetting how to experience life as we obsess over our image, says Melanie Reid

- Melanie Reid

For the last six months I have been living in a house without mirrors - not by choice, but because our new house hasn't yet been properly snagged. As time has passed, I have become deeply content with the absence of my own reflection.

There's something pleasingly ascetic about it: I don’t need reminding what I look like in a wheelchair, thanks very much. I don’t buy new clothes. My hair appointment is in the diary, so no point fretting. The rare occasions I need mascara I use a handheld magnifying mirror, designed, like women’s magazines, to induce self-loathing. So I never linger there.

The deeper point is that I feel a welcome sense of escape. As an adult woman severely disabled by an accident, my physical and sexual identity was irretrievably lost. Mirrors and photographs hurt. Invisibility is kinder. But that makes me, in today’s world, a freak.