May 18, 2022
I’ve come to resent mirrors. A false image of a false world, watching as the real world passes by. I’ve come to resent mirrors – well, any version of me reflected into the real world, of the person who has to live the days and months when it gets bad again.
It’s gotten bad again.
It began to fester on a Monday, because of course it did. My mind goes into overdrive as soon as I try on a dress that I’ve been dreading to step into. The zipper struggles, but the bow holds it together. The bow can’t hold the false world, though, because it’s tight, too tight around the area of my midsection I’ve hated my entire life. I sit down and then the coping kicks in; I manage to make it back to my room without crying. The second that stupid dress that I didn’t even want finds its place on a hanger, I cry.
I cry for the little girl who had so much naivety for the world, the false world, and a lack of knowledge of what the term body image truly meant and all of the baggage that definition will carry, well into her adult years.
I cry for the woman I am now, weeping between bingeing and dysmorphia. A mind so fucked up I crave to starve myself just to feel something.
It got worse on a Wednesday. I stand, bare to my mirror, and become a stranger to the body I’ve occupied for as long as I’ve been breathing. My legs look out of place and I feel so far removed that I see that they’re bigger than they were two days ago. In the back of my mind, I know they aren’t, but the false world lies to hold me hostage. I always say that I can change, start a new lifestyle so I can see twenty-five, or thirty, but I keep crawling back to extensive restaurant menus and eating off a second plate. I have a bad relationship with food and I wish that one day it will resolve and I can finally stop feeding the guilt in my stomach.
And I know that I’m more than my skin – that I’ve got a personality that’s as addicting as a pint of ice cream, and laugh as loud as a party cannon – but numb is all I feel nowadays and I can’t look at myself in the eyes and see someone worth loving. I never thought that my own reflection would make me sick, but time is a fickle thing that can do so much damage, even without meaning to. I think that half of where this all began has to do with the consumption of media and all of the negatives that come with it, buried in all of the positives. The media has made me ashamed to be a size 18.
So much do I see people – especially women – the same size or even bigger than me use social media to celebrate and express themselves in such a bright, positive light but are left shunned, mocked, and ridiculed by those who take pride in their false world, rather than hide from it. However, I am moved to see these beautiful people comfortable in their skin, hoping to inspire those just like them to find a home in their own. I am my own home, but I don’t think I’ll be making it there any time soon. I have a lot of myself to work on because recently I don’t want to be me anymore; I don’t want my skin anymore.
My body doesn’t feel like the one I grew into.
