**** incandescent lighting,
My worst enemy.
Or maybe it is me, the toughest critic, the hopeless perfectionist.
Brushing my teeth and I can’t even look in the mirror,
Can’t face my own face because I don’t want to see.

Tired of picking apart my imperfections, subtle flaws
That seem

To scream

To shout

To blare

“Look at me! Focus on my faults!”

Makeup, diets, exercise, fashion.
All vain attempts to be who society wants me to be, but why can’t I just be me?
I don’t know who I am, who I am supposed to be, what I want.
Others stare.
I wonder.
What’s racing through their minds, what flows through their streams of conscious observations?
“She looks nice. She looks tired. She looks lost.”
All labels to describe me
From the outside looking in.

Sometimes I feel like I do know.
An epiphany? Enlightened? Omniscient?
But at the end of the day, I look into the mirror…
Just a quick, accidental glance.
“I don’t know you, and ****… that incandescent lighting makes you looks fat”