I struggle alot with 'why?' Why don't I try? Why am I unhappy? Why can't I love my body? Why can't i just live my life as fucked up and deadly as i'd like regardless of the emotional impact it'd have on others? Why do I care?
Everyday when I wake up and look in the mirror, for a moment, just the faintest moment I get lost. I look at my protruding bones, my sallow skin, my empty, tired eyes. In that moment, i don't see skinny. I don't see fat. I see a tortured child struggling to survive. The next instant, it's gone, I am again big. I am again dealing with a lifetime of bad hair days, skin that seems to not have settled right on my face as i slept, aand a fear that today will be the day my peers finally tell me that i am going to be cast out and rejected, that i am not good enough.
I once read a mental health journal on trauma and abuse that said victims of severe trauma stop mentally developing at whatever age the trauma occured. Despite a gain in intelligence, social skill, or whatever, in the eyes of the victim, they forever remain developmentally that age. At first, i was intrigued. Then i decided i didn't believe it. However, after being upset i tried to conciously witness how i subconciously reacted to negative events in my life. It was astonishing to me because despite my intelligence, despite my manners and ability to articulate myself, when i feel threatened or experience something negative, i tend to revert right back to the age i was when i experienced the trauma i can't seem to heal from.
Maybe, just maybe that's why in that brief moment in the mirror, early in the morning i see a child. I am staring down the very core of my psyche and it's scary. I'm witnessing that no longer is it the abuser who is continuing to inflict that trauma on me-- it's now me.
