The mirror mocks my every move
Every lump I try to smooth
The mirror cons me of my happiness
Knot in my throat, stuck like this

Dysmorphia

I feel the corners of my mouth
Like they're tied to the ground
I try to fix it, try to heal
I try to replace it, the shame I feel

Dysmorphia

Feeling visceral
Indescribable
If only I could find
Something comparable

Dysmorphia

Psychological issues?

Sure.

I've got plenty.

I don't know exactly when it started
But some time ages ago
During elementary school
I just felt so worthless
Like I was numb
I wanted to feel
But I didn't know how
And it wasn't a sharp pain
I would welcome a sharp pain
It was dull ache that wouldn't leave me
I froze in my own icy thoughts
Maybe it was the loneliness
Or all the things those girls said to me
Maybe it was the insults or the whispers
Or maybe it was just my twisted mind
But whatever the cause
I tried to **** myself
When I was just a little 11 year old girl
When some girls were still playing with Barbies in secret
I was secretly playing with knives and ropes
I would take that blade
And scratch a cut into my wooden headboard
One slit in the wood for every moment that I wanted to die
Because I was too young back then to even think of my wrist
That came later
A few years later
And still
There are days where I just feel so horrible and sad and broken
For absolutely zero reason
It doesn't make sense
Nothing bad is even happening
But I feel shattered
I spent a year feeling so. hollow.
So f!cking hollow
I felt like I couldn't breathe
Like I wasn't alive
I spent entire days
Not speaking
I still miss the cuts sometimes, honestly
I like my scars
Which sounds terrible
But I trace them with my fingernails absentmindedly some days
During the darker nights
It comforts me
Because even though I’m not going to cut myself ever again
I can jolt myself into remembering the pain
And it is a form of relief in itself
I don’t know
Not something I can explain
Is that depression?
Probably not though, I feel bad suggesting it in front of people who actually for sure have depression when I haven't been analyzed
But still, it's not impossible I guess

I spent 5 years
From grade 5 through to grade 9
Which is pretty **** young
Feeling fat
Hating my body
Hating myself
I can see my ribs but I still feel fat
It’s okay I can fix that
Eating a little less
Skip a meal
Just skip lunch
Just eat a tiny breakfast, no lunch
No breakfast, no lunch but it’s okay because I have a good dinner
I think I’m losing weight
Is it bad that I’m in grade 5 and thinking like this?
This is great
I think it’s working
I’m in grade 6 now
Maybe I won’t be worthless if I become skinny
I can still see my ribs
I could from the beginning
But I still feel fat
Okay, less dinner now
Hide it well
Let’s switch
No lunch, a little dinner and a bit of breakfast
Just enough to stay alive
Although how much to I really want to stay alive?
Fat.
Look at my legs
Look at their legs
My thighs God I hate my thighs
Eat less
Eat less and less
Until I’m basically surviving on snacks and just the beginnings of each meal
Just enough to take a few bites before they leave the room for a minute
Just long enough for me to throw away my food
But I don’t think I’m losing weight
I will never be enough
7th grade
Just a little less
Don’t tell any of them
Losing pounds
Check my reflection
I still feel fat
I try to be less so I can feel like I’m more
But does the number on the scale even matter anymore?
I’m promising and promising I ate before I came
But these pretty little lies are driving even me insane
And they can’t see through my smile they can’t figure it out
I’m slowly killing myself
From the inside out
Pretty soon, “I don’t feel well” is my favorite phrase and an everyday thing
A justification for my small portions that I don’t finish
It’s true though
I don’t feel well
I feel worthless.
It continues into 8th and 9th grade
Worse and worse
Looking up the calories of different food
Surviving on water and tea
Just enough food to stay alive
Though I really don’t care that much about my own survival, really
Is that anorexia nervosa?
I doubt it
But it’s a possibility I guess

I look in the mirror
And I feel so f!cking ugly
I literally cannot find ONE thing I like about myself
I cannot leave the house without makeup
Because I am SO ashamed of my own face
I genuinely feel bad for the people who have to see my face
I cry sometimes, because I look in the mirror and see my own worthless hideousness
I remember that sleepover I was invited to with the popular girls and I wondered why
When I got locked in a closet, got soap sprayed in my mouth and locked outside in the freezing cold snow without pants on when I was just trying to change into my night clothes
That’s when I knew I had been invited just so they could torment me
I don’t like being the entertainment for the party
I tried to just go to sleep because if I called home I would look like a coward
And my mother who NEVER let me go to sleepovers would get to say “I told you so”
And when they thought I was asleep
But I wasn’t
I listened to them talk for a full hour
My eyes on the clock
My ears on their conversation
“Is she asleep”?
I didn’t know they were talking about me until I heard them mention my name
When they talked for a full f!cking hour
In detail
About why I was ugly
On what levels I was ugly
The degree of my ugliness
I didn’t cry
I didn’t sit up and tell them I could hear them
It would be too humiliating
I listened
And I know they are right
But now it’s getting bad
My face doesn’t even look human to me anymore
It looks like some sort of beastly troll’s face
It looks f!cking hideous
My mother is worried about me
Because I can’t even look myself in the mirror when I have no makeup on
Because I Freak. Out when it is suggested that I might have to be in public without hiding my ugly face in makeup
It literally affects my ability to function properly in everyday life.
The thing is, those girls said it
And they ALL agreed
So if I REALLY had dysmorphia
Then it would all be in my mind
And if they all agreed I was hideous
Then I must be
So how can it be imagined?
I don’t know
Anyway
My point is
I suppose
MAYBE
It is possible
I have dysmorphia

But
Depression
Anorexia Nervosa
Dysmorphia

Those possible diseases of the mind
I
Have multiple
Psychological issues

BUT OCD IS NOT F!CKING ONE OF THEM

How dare he suggest such a thing
Just because I
“Always seem to be working towards something”
Excuse me for not getting drunk and high and naked
Putting off work
Not caring about anything
It’s not OCD though
It’s just called going somewhere in life
Because I may as well
Since in my mind
I’m hopelessly lost

With a face and voice like that you’d never guess
the girl was five foot ten
she walks in and towers above the image
you expected
a girl pushing five feet, dainty, even whimsical
but surely petite
she’s far from petite

This girl sympathizes with transgender bodies
yet envies those who succeed
Hormones and knives can fix gods mistake
but nothing can fix me
so women will sit dreaming of dropping pounds
and she dreams of dropping feet
never complete

Psychs and shrinks digress this to be nothing more
than another disorder
Her views on herself are simply brushed off
as body dysmorphia
yet therapy nor pills shall shake her desire
to fix gods mistake
by freeing her soul of this giant hell hole
leaving it for someone else to take.

where am i?
how am I to write when
I am no different from
those gaseous ephemeral words
who lie prostrate upon
the pages of my dictionary
carved plainly into
those battlefields strewn across
the wartorn country
my heart the despotic dictator
whose primal drumming
carries no tune
and no rhythm
and throws of explosions
grenades that
black out the world for
a brief moment
until it careens back and
slams into me
disorientated

i should have been born twice
for how could i have
both my body and that
intangible inexplicable
something inside
it stirs at the molten core
of me
that chasm that forged
those graven images
that first gave way to
a pictographic language
and offered me
a voice
to explain that immutable
all powerful
urge
lust
to throw myself on that
red button and
detonate
burst into a million pieces
and finally relieve that
nauseating pressure
of adipose smushed between
holy bone and
saintly skin
interloping in that space
and separating two lovers

barriers create madness

walls box me in
and yet i grow
an expanding balloon girl
macy’s day parade and
candy littered streets
and razor sharp edges
to steel walls pressing harder
against me than
my supple skin could
ever possibly press
back

i can’t breathe

there is no room
for my lungs to expand
and feel the
fresh sun filled meadow
of crystal air
delivering oxygen to
starved alveoli
and i can’t find your chest
to guide me
in impossible respiration

i’m suffocating in my own skin
from no outside force
but my body itself
turns inward and
shouts its dominance at my
cowering self
sniveling in the corner
of my dusty half used heart
where no blade could possible
land a blow deep enough
to silence the torment and
particular personal poison
a torture to course through
every part of me
activating every single neuron
and making me
hyperaware of my
shame and noxious
venomous corpulence
a reality i
never wanted you to see
but is written plainly
in fiery script across my forehead
and in every fold of fat.

my body, the hand grenade
ugly crawls inside, makes a nest.
an animal chained in a cage,
my insect in a jar.

i spit out my ugly. it wasn't supposed to be this way.

life is a simple arrangement
of numbers and measures.
the bathroom mirror under florescent lights
is my sacred altar.
never mind that nothing else is sacred.

my broken body, the hungry child
i give her food, i take it away. i make her cry.
i bleed for her.

she swallows my ache and comes back for more.

My hipbones rock me on the wooden floor 
Protruding from my frame 
Skin bruises from simply laying on my stomach
Yet I am not skinny
 red lines mark where the folds of my stomach have been, 
my arm like wings 
my thighs hugging each other tightly
 stretching occasionally my eye catches the reflection of a stick like woman I can't recognize in the dark window until I realize she is me 
as that settles in my true details fill in 
morphing the strange woman into the ugly that is me. 
Striving to become the strange woman that once was 
I shove a finger down my throat

Ever since the warm weather began,
I started getting really bad anxiety about my body
The fear of wearing a bathing suit has always been very real, for me
Even when I barely weighed 100 pounds,
I thought I was fat
I thought my body was disgusting
So now that I've gained a little weight,
I was terrified to put my bathing suit on
But you know what?
I did
And I don't look that bad
Yes, I need to get back in better shape for my health
and for my own sake
But I don't look like the gelatinous blob
I thought I would
As a woman, I've been conditioned to believe since childhood,
that if I don't have a tiny, flat stomach,
I'm not beautiful
That I have to be a size 2,
or guys won't be attracted to me
That if I don't keep my body in perfect shape all the time,
I'm lazy and unhealthy
I'm trying to learn how to love my body
no matter what it looks like
Because looks fade,
and I won't be 26 forever
But I'll always be me,
and I'll always be worth loving

Mirrors are all traitors
As in them I can see
Just what a monster I am;
That I will always be.
I have lumps and and spots
That make me unloveable.
And everything I eat is
Another bite of trouble.

Why can’t I ever look
Like the models in the book?
Why is it that I
Can’t look myself in the eye?
No one will look longingly
At the gorgon I turned out to be.

I don’t watch cartoons
Because what I see is me
What did I do to deserve
To become so **** ugly?
Did I cross the path of a cat
That was an omen meant to warn
And I ignored it so now
I inherited this awful form?

Why can’t I be the kind
With a beautifully formed behind?
I wish it was my history
To stimulate evil jealousy.

I want to look like a dream,
But instead I must surrender
A fragile wish, as it seems
An unfilled hope altogether.
Some friends are sweet to me
They say I look fine to them,
But I know what I can see
And I deserve no diadem.

I want to breathe in so deeply
My lungs inflate
Break their cage
And let my heart
Along with my feelings, thoughts, fear, and numbness
Fly out
So I hold my breath
And I almost get there

It’s mysterious the way the mind works
How your self worth can just
Wither away
And how your will just falters

How looking in the mirror
Can become a thing of fear
And you pick out each
Little flaw, each imperfection
When you can’t see your ribs
- You can never see your ribs -

How helping yourself
Turns into guilt
And how everyone stares
And picks you apart
And judges

But that is not you
It is your mind
Pulling away at you
Blurring the truth
As it rots