Mosaic Woman (Part I)
(TW: Eating Disorders & Body Dysmorphia)
- Morning Musings
Each morning I wake up and look into my mirror so it can decide what kind of day I am going to have. Will it allow me to see past my physical imperfections or will I continue to be consumed by them? Will I look into the mirror and see myself for more than the weight my body carries? Will my eyes zero in on the crookedness of my teeth and the asymmetry of my jawline? Will this be another day that I am forced to just look away?
Sometimes when I look into the mirror, I wish it would just shatter. I wish it would explode into thousands of tiny pieces so that I no longer have a way to spend so much time scrutinizing my appearance. I don’t want to know how tired I look today or how my body looks in my outfit.
I just want to live.
Maybe seeing myself in a pile of tiny mirrors would be less painful than facing a whole one. My left eye would look better broken into fifteen pieces, and my jawline would become the most beautiful mosaic. All of this asymmetry would start to make sense. I could be as beautiful as Picasso’s Weeping Woman.
I could be the type of art the world wants to see.
2. Teeth
Crooked teeth shattered into a million little pieces would look just like all of the others. You would never know which is the front tooth that’s been haunting me ever since it made its first appearance in the third grade. It would no longer jut out further than its surrounding neighbors; they could all finally be displaced together. The two teeth that come to such a strong point that people don’t believe they are real would fit in amongst the rest. The smile I have been learning how to live with for twenty years would cease to exist.
I would never have to answer another phone call where someone asks for the one with the messed-up teeth. Halloween would no longer bring with it the dread of wondering how many people will ask me this year if my teeth are a part of my costume. Smiling wouldn’t be so scary, and for once, I would feel comfortable in my own skin.
I would finally find peace within those pieces.
3. Reasons Why My Teeth Still Look Like This
- Fear:
What if I look worse with braces?
Imagine the pain of metal scraping against your gums.
I think my mouth would always be bleeding.
This seems like a worse fate than a tooth out of place.
2. Finances:
Dental insurance is a luxury.
If I have to choose between paying my bills and having straight teeth, I suppose I should choose the former.
I have to pay my car payment because I can’t drive straight teeth to work.
Straight teeth won’t pay my college tuition.
3. Freedom:
Crooked teeth don’t have to be ugly.
My worth should not be based on my physical beauty.
Why should I have to look like everyone else?
4. Fear:
Who am I without these teeth?
4. Break Glass In Case Of An Emergency
The self-help books always say that in order to bloom, you must break. I wonder if this is what they meant. Shatter until you finally see something that you like reflected back at you. Break into so many pieces that you can’t even recognize yourself anymore. Break until you become someone else.
Break.
Rebuild.
Try again.
Maybe, then, I have never been broken enough to get better. Maybe it isn’t breaking that I need; it’s an explosion, not a slight crack that turns into a crater, but a shock to the system that sends shards of my past everywhere.
I don’t want to be able to pick up the pieces and patch myself back up. I want the remnants of a past I do not look back on fondly to sift through my fingers and leave this body for good. I want to forget what it feels like to be an outsider. I want to walk into a crowd and disappear into it.
I just want to fit in.
I want to wake up without wondering if today will be another day that I do not feel at home in this body. I want to get dressed in the morning without feeling like I could crawl out of my skin. I want to look into the mirror and smile without instantly becoming so sad. I want to know what it’s like to wake up and be normal.
5. Adjective: Usual, Typical, Expected.
When you smile at someone, are you afraid?
I am.
I would give anything not to know that fear. What a gift it must be to be born normal.
I get lost in daydreams about having a straight, toothpaste commercial smile.
Imagine.
I would look you straight in the eye and flash the same pearly white grin you’ve been trained to appreciate as beautiful. My camera roll wouldn’t be an endless line of photos that were almost pretty, except. I could smile on my wedding day and know that I would actually enjoy looking back on those photos. The relentless bullying would be erased from my childhood. I would have learned how to love myself.
What is normal?
The chance to live a quiet life, undetected.
6. Pretty, Ugly
I’ve spent the last seventeen years at war with my body. I would give anything to go back in time and stop my twelve-year-old self from destructing. Instead of internalizing the harsh criticisms of my peers, I would learn to let them go. I would tell myself that the pain they are inflicting on me is just a reflection of something they are struggling with internally. I would nurture myself instead of detonating a bomb.
The internet tells me that a face like mine just isn’t trendy. My jawline sits too crooked for the current beauty standards, and my teeth are too deformed to be beautiful. There are certain beauty quirks that have been deemed socially acceptable, but I do not meet those criteria. Gap teeth are beautiful, but what about teeth that just aren’t straight? Countless videos show me innovative ways to even out my jawline, and I swear I never noticed mine until they told me to correct it.
Pretty ugly only goes so far, and it seems that I have reached the maximum distance. Stylized flaws are the only imperfections we’re allowed to call beautiful.
The perfect still prevail.
I can paint on a new face every day, but each morning and night, I still have to reconcile it with the original one. Make-up can only do so much when you can’t even trust what’s being reflected back at you. I do not get to decide what I look like; my mirror does all of the thinking for me. Some days, I am beautiful. Other days, I can’t even look at myself. When I look into the mirror, I will never know if what I am trying to hide is actually there. I will never know for sure if all of this is just in my head. I like to think that I have a pretty good idea of what I look like, but ultimately, I know that truth will always evade me.
