Old Photos & Reflections

Trigger Warning: Eating Disorders and Body Dysmorphia

I do not know who I am anymore.

The woman in these photos is someone I knew once.

She has so much light in her eyes,

And round, cherub cheeks that burn hot pink whenever anyone focuses on her for just a beat too long.

She is beautiful.

Some days, she does not like her body.

But she knows that she has to keep going.

She knows that the light at the end of the tunnel is there, even in the darkest times.

Even when it is flickering.

She knows that this isn’t the end.

I wonder where she is now.

What she is doing these days.

Because when I look in the mirror,

I can’t find her anywhere.

This face is hollow.

Deep pools encased in shadows so dark underneath these emerald eyes that some days I think I could drown in them.

Some days, I think I am drowning.

These cheeks are scarred now.

This skin is almost always broken.

All of the light in these eyes has been dimmed.

Some days, I can count the bones in my chest;

One for each time I have let myself down.

While others, I can only fixate on the softness of a stomach I have always been trying to abandon.

A stomach I have been starving for 17 years,

who still refuses to ever leave me.

I wipe the fog from the mirror but she is still there.

Hollow.

And sad.

If I could talk to the girl in the pictures now, I would warn her that one day the darkness will be shining stronger than the light.

I would remind her that though she will not be ready for what the future has in store for her, she has never been ready for any of the bad things that came her way,

And still, she is standing.

She has always been left standing.

I would beg her not to let the darkness win

And to guard her light with every ounce of strength she can muster.

I would remind her that even on the days when she cannot recognize the woman in the mirror before her,

It is her. The girl in the photos.

Though some days she may lay hidden, she is never lost.

One day, she will come back to you.

You just have to remember to trust in the light.