You think I don’t know what it’s like to not be beautiful? You speak like you do. You talk like you know of my struggles, like you’ve faced my pain, like you have witnessed me hunched over a toilet seat, a toothbrush dangling lazily from my lips, and not because I used it to clean my enamels.
No, I used it to clean my system.
You think you know that the reason I trim my nails is so that it won’t hurt when I push them in, when I pull them out, because bile is bad enough, but bile with blood is even worse.
You think you know how I tiptoe to my mirror in the wee hours of the morning, my hands reaching out, not to me, but to my reflection, or what I’d hope it’d be. I can make stuff up in the dark, and in the little light that seeps through my window, I can almost see me someone who is not me, who is fairer, thinner, prettier, and then I smile.
You think you know how it hurts when people tell me I’m pretty, because all my life I’ve been told by the world that I wasn’t, and that it didn’t matter if I were funny, or talented, or kind, because people will always judge you by how you look.
You think you know that I have a patch on my scalp, a habit formed out of being told over and over that my hair was a mess and I looked like a Harry Potter half-giant. If only I hadn’t listened, because since I had, then I had to stop eating, because I thought stopping eating would mean stopping looking, but the only thing that stopping eating led to was anorexia, and hair loss, and soon my hair was no longer bushy; soon it was no longer curly; soon it was no longer soft.
You think you know me. You think you know my sleepless nights and anxiety, the way I worry about you and me and me and you and you and me and me and you and universes and millipedes and metaphors and Euripedes and myriad uses user mental milieu universal and you and me and me and you.
You think you know me.
You think you know the ridges and crooks behind my teeth that speak of ill state, of the parts of me that are bruised and purpled because of punches I self-inflict while wishing I had more bone less flab more muscle less fat more beauty less fuck, fuck fuck fuck
You think you know me.
You think my asking if I look okay is a cry for validation.
It’s not, it’s a question seeking honesty. And whenever you say yes, I think you lie.
You think you know me. You see me and you see my good deeds, my hard work, my jokes, my wit, I see a never ending cycle of trying so hard to let go of the idea of my ugly, but having it eat me alive, insides out, burnt, broken.
You think you know me, but all you do is see me.
Of perpetual finds 