a time for reflection

My mirror doesn't work anymore.

That's not quite right. It works fine. Nothing broke, I mean, and anyway it's not just my mirror. What I mean is this:

I can't see my reflection anymore.

I don't know when it started exactly, but one day I noticed I was kind of indistinct in the mirror. A little transparent and a little blurry, and I thought it was just the mirror so I went over to my sister's house and it was the same there. "Do you see that?" I asked her. She said no.

Maybe I should have stayed and tried to figure it out, but instead we went out drinking, and made fun of the dancers and got really drunk. I made my way into the bathroom at one point and as I was washing my hands I stared into the mirror for a minute before realizing I just wasn't there anymore. It was upsetting so I told my sister I wanted to go home, and she agreed to split a cab and let me stay on her couch.

My reflection wasn't back by the morning, but my sister said she could see it just fine. She didn't see anything wrong. I decided to just leave before she could decide to get really worried about it. I visited my girlfriend and kissed her in front of the full-length mirror in her room. I wasn't there. I just didn't show up. In the mirror she was just standing there, looking happy and without me.

The mirror started showing things a little different than they were after a while. I wasn't there and people were different. She didn't have the jacket I'd got her. Her hair was different. Her room was decorated different. It would have been fine if the mirror world didn't seem so much happier, so much more beautiful. It was subtle but the differences were profound.

I broke all of my mirrors. Threw them off the roof of my apartment. I asked my girlfriend to move hers to places where I wouldn't see them. Nobody knew why, of course, and she didn't question it. I learned where they were and learned to avert my gaze or close my eyes.

I just want to understand where I've gone. It seems like even in the real world now I can see things the way they would be without me, and even my girlfriend's embrace feels like I'm seeing it through a glass darkly.