You live in a railroad apartment, Virgo. There aren’t very many walls, or doors—it’s kind of just like living in a long tube. Signing your lease signed you up for the expensive burden—how does one approach decorating a never ending line of barren walls?
An innocent man working at a thrift store agreed to sell you a beautiful unpriced mirror for $20 dollars, which galvanized you into a new lifestyle: Believing Walls Cannot Be Complete Without Mirrors.
Slowly but surely your home will fill with mirrors. If you get sick of looking at a big blank wall, you slap a mirror on it and pat yourself on the back for your sublime cleverness. Once a mirror is the antidote to one decorating problem, you grow emboldened with the certainty that they’ll be the solution to all your troubles.
What began as a harmless, inexpensive approach to decorating the chute you live inside, has now evolved into an immersive, chilling experience, akin to living inside an inverted disco ball, or being Natalie Portman in Black Swan. You watched a few minutes of Black Swan on a plane once, but had to stop when the skin peeling part happened. Since you jumped ship so early, you really have no idea if the skin peeling that scared you was a major plot point that all those who have seen Black Swan will remember (“Ah yes, the storied Portman skin peel”) or if it is one tiny moment eclipsed by the rest of the film, only remembered by the squeamish few who Say No To Peeling. Your guess is as good as mine, Virgo, I was too grossed out by that SP to continue, too.
Anyway, you know the story of a frog, who is boiled in a pot by gradually raising the temperature, making the frog unaware it is being cooked? So goes your gradual simmer into insanity, as you boil betwixt six hundred and fifty seven thousand decorative mirrors.
When the time finally comes to hang your six hundred and fifty eight thousandth mirror on the wall of your little tunnel home, the universe will intervene. Instead of a hanging wire on the back of your new, enormous mirror, is just an old frail string. It’s a massive mirror, and you aren’t sure if the string is strong enough to hold the weight (It obviously is not!). You’ll give two small, all-for-show tugs of the string, which is somehow all the information you need to confidently slap that bad boy up on the wall, where you are certain it will stay for eternity.
It will instantly careen to the floor, of course. Luckily its fall will be broken by a power strip, saving you from seven years of bad luck. Your first words after the hundred pound mirror you hung up with an old string falls to the ground will be “I’m in shock.”
You thought that because the string was tied to the back of the mirror, that this was somehow a message from the retailer announcing that this was a strong, capable string, ready to do the impossible. The mirror was purchased at a used furniture store in Brooklyn where everything is covered in dirt and the salesperson reminds you of the woman in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows who supposedly knew Dumbledore and all of his secrets but was actually just Nagini the snake :/
I hate to break this to you, Virgo, but this shop does not care if you live or die, and certainly wouldn’t ever send you a helpful message by way of an antique string. The crashing of the mirror will have a sobering effect on you. You’ll pause to look around the haunted ballet studio you live inside, and finally notice that you’ve been really over doing it, mirror-wise.
You will wonder, insecurely, what it means about you, to have accumulated such an inordinate, uncouth harem of mirrors in your home. The obvious answer is that you’re vain, but you reject this clear explanation, and instead set off on a self indulgent quest for symbolic answers.
Grasping at straws, you’ll claim that you like mirrors so much because you, “Aren’t afraid of reality.” Uh, nice try Virgo, but last week I overheard you saying, “I like when I don’t wear my contacts because the house looks cleaner,” so you’re going to dig a little deeper, I’m afraid.
Your mirror sobriety will eventually lead to panic. You fear your precious mirrors will be the fodder that your dinner guests (I don’t know how many times I have to ask this question, but what dinner guests?! You don’t host!) whisper about amongst themselves once they leave your home. They’ll speculate about the roots of your vanity, discuss whether or not the mirrors are a sex thing, and mock you a little bit, which—although this is a paranoid fantasy, still manages to hurt your feelings.
What once felt like a reasonable answer to a decorating problem now feels needlessly theatrical. You thought you were “creating illusions of depth and space,” but instead you accidentally constructed a set for a film that doesn’t exist starring a Jared Leto type who must reckon with their burgeoning personality disorder, navigating their fragmented reality by looking in many mirrors in a dimly lit room (some are cracked!).
I don’t disagree with your insecurities, Virgo. You’ve taken an innocent tenet of feng shui and perverted it until it became the work of nightmares. My advice moving forward is to introduce yourself to the wonderful worlds of photos! If you’re so keen to have faces all over the walls, maybe make some of the faces belong to people that aren’t you. As for your fears of being the laughing stock of the dinner parties you long to throw? Well, that’s probably going to happen anyway, Virgo—you’re an anxious host and an Only Okay cook, so speculating on your vanity may actually be a useful way to distract your guests from your other shortcomings.
I hope that even though you’re feeling self conscious about them right now, you can eventually find a way to enjoy your hallowed hall of mirrors. Stop pretending you aren't fascinated by your face and just enjoy your spooky reflection inside your spooky house!
The Skies Insist:
That you listen to the song Morenika by Tarta Relena. This song is Virgo’s favorite companion as she pretends that the changing of the seasons affect her more than all other people.
Incidentally, this is also the perfect song to score a slow, balletic walk through a hall of mirrors, as you grow to suspect that you have a mean twin (this was Virgo’s best guess about the plot of Black Swan).