Sasha’s tendency to retreat to the bathroom in restaurants or bars and cry in front of the mirror represents her morbid obsession with her own unhappiness. Not only does she remove herself from public settings so she can fully indulge her emotional breakdowns, but she also watches herself cry, noting the way she looks in these moments of sorrow. Her interest in her own face as she weeps aligns with her inability to stop thinking about her discontent, as she constantly ponders the nature of her sorrow instead of simply trying to live in the moment and enjoy her life. Rather than taking life “as it comes” (as Delmar encourages her to do), she incessantly analyzes the things that make her sad, thinking about what it feels like to lose herself in deep pits of emotion.
Furthermore, her habit of crying in front of mirrors also relates to her self-consciousness about her appearance, since she spends a lot of her time and energy worrying about how other people perceive her. Consequently, she often tries to hide behind new hairstyles or clothes, desperately trying to mask her sorrow. By openly weeping in front of the mirror, then, she allows herself a rare moment of emotional honesty—a moment in which she doesn’t have to hide her unhappiness. The mirrors themselves thus come to represent her strange and private relationship with her own emotions.
Bathroom Mirrors Quotes in Good Morning, Midnight
I stayed there, staring at myself in the glass. What do I want to cry about?....On the contrary, it’s when I am quite sane like this, when I have had a couple of extra drinks and am quite sane, that I realize how lucky I am. Saved, rescued, fished-up, half-drowned, out of the deep, dark river, dry clothes, hair shampooed and set. Nobody would know I had ever been in it. Except, of course, that there always remains something. Yes, there always remains something....
Bathroom Mirrors Symbol Timeline in Good Morning, Midnight
