When I was fourteen I ate an entire bottle of aspirin, because when I looked in the mirror I didn’t see me behind my eyes, it was a stranger staring back, I wanted to abandon this body, the one that didn’t belong to me.
When I see that same bottle in someone’s medicine cabinet you would think I would cringe but instead I feel homesick, a reminder of the day I thought I could swallow my sadness whole
& I think we’re all the same, I look in the mirror & I want to look like somebody else. Maybe if my jaw line was more defined, or if I was 5’8 instead of six feet, maybe then my body would feel like mine. Even though I don’t like the person I see, she looks more like me than she did when I was fourteen.
Staring into my eyes reminds me of being five years old, you’re holding my hand on the playground, staring out at all the other kids playing. I feel the same isolation I felt at nineteen standing in my aunts kitchen staring down my thanksgiving dinner plate as tears fell into the valley between green bean casserole & a pale slice of turkey.
I don’t feel alone though because I would rather feel small & insignificant than to feel lonely. I don’t love my features but I can see my soul behind my eyes & for a moment I feel like this body might belong to me.
allaboutbeingalive 