Dear Matthew:

I felt good when you assured me: “please never think that I am hiding anything on purpose”- thank you.

Regarding the movie, you asked me how did the mirror scene help me see reality and myself the way I am: It didn’t. At the time, the image of myself that I saw in the mirror was a shameful, bad, disgusting, unworthy, unlovable, guilty person. Fast forward, I retroactively see the person that I was as good, 100% loving, and lovable and oh, so innocent. (If only I lived so much of my life seeing the latter image, and not the former).

The movie moved me toward going out into the world because of hope for a better life, hope for life possibly being so much better than the misery that I knew too well.

anita