Editor: Katerina Tsitoura
Philologist

Have you ever wondered what made the mean stepmother the miserable creature whose happiness depended solely on Snow-White’s ruin? Psychologies claim that childhood is recorded deep into the core of our existence as – think about it – our parents’ voices, during the early years of our course into this map of cosmic destiny, are later transformed to our own inner voices that either equal a constant censure or a solidified ability to self-define us.

The cruel stepmother, lying in the couch of self-awareness, is turning time backwards, holds her breath and agonizes to listen to the hidden meanings behind the voices that clothed the cloak of whispers as not to betray the secrets of childhood labyrinths.

Into the black and white flashbacks of time passed, a little girl as innocent as the sun beams of our hopes, returns from school with good grades and a burst pride before noticing the disappointed looks of her mother upon hearing the news that it may be that her offspring aced with a 19/20 but, the girl next to her, Annie, triumphed with a 19,5/20.

Then, everything changed for ever, and an implacable mirror would remind to the once unwary child that happiness is graded on the basis of other people’s failures, that what eventually matters, is how mighty you seem to be, even if inside you, the castle of family pretence confines the freedom of the soul.

The girl of the story was now encaged to the most precious facade of worthless impressions, whistling pretentiously indifferent to the fact that the interior of the radiant store was showing signs of abandonment. So, she constantly posted pictures at social media and struggled to persuade us that the fake smiles can light the screens of isolation, that the numerous likes cover with a deceptive flame of a fire that never started, the nights of lonely tears.

Then she dressed up with her shiny clothes of narcissism, she held tightly in her hand the briefcase of professional acknowledgement and strived to assure the praise of her boss along with the fitting compliments and her unpaid overtime. At the arena of work fame, the winner grabbed the cloves of unfair competition and hurt the face of creative collaboration, as the colleague owed to be either an ignorant extra or a cunning conspirator that undermined the blazing light of the once careless girl.

The protagonist of our story used to choose inappropriate companions in an attempt to persuade herself that her indisputable charm is inspiring the ultimate, mythical love to people medically prescribed against commitments and a disgust in truth.

Years went by and she reached an age of marriage and therefore she had to choose the proper partner, the easy-go Croesus who could guarantee acceptance in social gatherings of intolerable dullness and the photogenic poses in the family albums of her severely envious relatives.

The mean stepmother, at one time, had her own child and being knowledgable of the most recent theories of effective upbringing promised herself, through her personal Facebook wall of course, that she would raise a balanced adult, a soul with a self-contained entity and colourful dreams.

But, one afternoon, the candidate self-contained entity was returning from school with worse grades than the ones her schoolmate got and the loving mother of three MScs in parental empathy, of ten seminars on the empowerment of self-confidence of the child, was falling loudly down the clouds of perfection and landed with terror at the possible answers towards her close friends regarding the crucial question. Is your daughter the best in her class? And the accompanying, devastating comment.. Because mine is the class leader, you know..

And that immense mirror if you took a closer look, was as if it smiled back with sorrow, as if it wished it could redeem its occasional owners from the virus of meaningless comparisons and whisper that glass that breaks doesn’t necessarily mean seven years of bad luck but a life of true fulfillment.

You? Are you going to break your own mirror or are you going to encage it in a golden frame and post it at Facebook ?