The Look Into The Mirror

As I woke up, grunts and groans, sighs and moans were the songs I started to sing. My morning soundtrack was usually the same depressing, obnoxiously loud, and gruesome playlist of physical malaise inhibiting my ability to get out of bed. “Gosh, if this is how I sound, imagine what I look like,” I warned myself time after time, preparing myself for the familiar shock of a lifetime. Yet, despite my disgusting songs that portrayed my inner “beauty”, the morning trudged on. As my pain-filled soundtrack was playing, the usual war broke out. Pillows took flight and attacked the floor trying to destroy all possible ways for me to desert my bed. However, the pillows efforts of smothering the floor just made a giant mess and an annoyingly convenient, fluffy walkway to the thing that birthed the term ‘insecure’; the mirror.

I used to mentally prepare myself for either the mirror to crack, or for my eyes to burn. After I’d clean up the broken glass or rub my eyes with water, I’d sit and stare into the mirror, and think. Maybe I was waiting for a miracle? Maybe I was waiting for the rain to wash away all my ugly glory? I was waiting for anything. Anything that would make my face look like Cindy Crawford’s face does. I wished my genes to realize how ugly they really were, hoping they’d rearrange themselves to create a beautiful Lauren Levi. I even turned to god at times screaming and yelling at him for making me the way I am. Why did I have to cry from my own face every morning? Why did anyone have to suffer being ugly? Why was ugly even created? I soon became engulfed in the flames of self-hate. The hate burned me all over leaving that pungent, overdone smell and big invisible scars. Yet I, with my perverse mind, felt that maybe I’d look at least a little bit better being burned by the acid heavy facial cleansers, and oily concealers that fueled my self-hatred. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t satisfy my hunger for beauty. If I wasn’t beautiful on the outside, I deemed myself ugly on the inside too.

I wasn’t just hungry for beauty; I was ravenous. I salivated when I saw the girls with the perfect noses, perfect eye color, jaw line, tooth size, and hair texture. In my mind I carefully selected the exact features I always dreamed of and put them onto the mannequin I drew on my notes all day long. She would always come out beautiful. She was just so absolutely beautiful, that I named her beautiful. That’s what I envisioned people calling me when they needed something, or tried to get my attention. Yet, as I snapped back to reality, I found myself again sitting on the floor, with my pillows all dead and bleeding from the bloody battle, staring into my mirror.