#body dysmorphia//

[brooke2valley]

Ya see the difference? 🤭 💕

It's less of a "I look wrong" now and more of a "oh I need to clean myself up" lol it gets better.

Promise ❤️

[salamanding]

quick little art about dysmorphia and how i don’t know what i look like

[catchymemes]

[whatcha-thinkin]

Tell your stories in the tags, if you want to share!

[gor3sigil]

If you're all about body positivity but make fun of men with hairline receiding or bald, fat, with a beer belly etc, no you're not.

Pretty sick and tired of seeing people laugh and trash men who are not tall skinny queer looking white dudes and be like "everyone is beautiful" in the same breath.

[tomboyyyaoi]

i think often about how mizuki used to cover her mirror....

[hekatiane]

I am absolutely radiating. Why can't you see?

[daftpatience]

woo woo topsurgery waitlist vent comic incoming woo woo

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[kittykatninja321]

My less popular opinion (and what I believe to be implied by the art in Lost Days) is that rather than waking up in a fully grown body Jason didn’t actually complete his puberty until after his Lazarus pit dip while he was on his murder tour. Imagine you’re tied up in a basement in Berlin getting interrogated by a teenager and his voice is cracking the entire time and if you laugh he’s going to shoot you

[classycookiexo]

[mischa-makowka]

[looserslore]

Sometimes I look at my own photos and feel like a stranger.

[sn00kiisstuff]

Body dysmorphia literally got me feeling like i look like this😭

[solarmorrigan]

[cw: weight loss, body image issues/body dysmorphia]

Consider: Steve whose migraines become unmanageable for a while, or who falls into a harsh depressive episode after everything with Vecna, or who experiences reduced mobility or chronic pain due to the many varied injuries he's picked up over the years, or any combination of the above

Steve who loses his appetite and who isn't able to keep up with the workout routine he used to have and who loses weight and loses muscle mass and fucking hates it

He's always been on the lean side, but he hasn't been skinny since probably eighth grade, when he was still gawky and growing into his frame. But this is different; this isn't awkward adolescence, something he'll grow out of, this is the sight of his ribs through his skin and his hipbones jutting out and his wrists getting too skinny for his watch. This is feeling cold all the time and struggling to lift things he used to be able to pick up without much trouble

(It's fear, too. Not just a fear that he'll never get back to where he used to be, but fear that something will happen and he'll be too weak to stop it. Too weak to help. Too weak to protect anyone the way he should)

There are days he can't quite stand looking at himself; can't stand the sight of baggy clothes that used to fit perfectly, can't stand looking at tired eyes staring out of the sharpened angles of his face. He feels insubstantial this way. Like anyone could look right past him - right through him

Eddie never does, though. He never treats Steve differently, except to worry about his health - but never what he looks like. He hugs Steve as tightly as before, kisses him just as hard as before, whistles at him when he catches Steve in the middle of dressing, just like before. Like he isn't disappointed that Steve doesn't look good anymore, like he isn't even bothered

He'll hold Steve, and pull him close on bad days, and he'll let Steve be upset, but he'll never stand for Steve speaking badly about himself. He'll always push back, sometimes gently, sometimes loudly, always reminding Steve that he loves him, and what he looks like is a part of that. Reminding him that Eddie loves it all

"But you can gain it back, if you want to. When you're doing better," Eddie tells him

"What if I'm never doing better? What if I can never get back to where I was?" Steve demands. "What if this is just my body now?"

"Then it is." Eddie kisses his shoulder, his neck, his cheek. "Then I'll help you learn how to love it as much as you did before. As much as I still do."

And he says it so openly, so honestly, that even on bad days, Steve thinks that maybe - maybe he could be okay

[digitalsymbiote]

Disconnect Syndrome

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed out in the field. They say that being synced with a mech for long periods of time can have detrimental effects on a pilots psyche. Disconnect Syndrome is what they call it, because the symptoms don’t really start to hit until you disengage from your mech.

Sometimes emergencies happen though, and mechs are designed to be able to support their pilots long past the designated “Safe Deployment Time.” The cockpit is equipped with an array of stimulants, vitamins, and nutrient paste to help minimize the physical effects of long deployments. The onboard Integrated Mechanical Personality has largely free reign to administer these as needed to maintain its pilots well-being.

Which is why you’re still able to make it back to the hangar after roughly 36 hours, over four times longer than the established safe period. Your mech had kept you going, helped to keep the exhaustion at bay long enough for you to make your way back from behind enemy lines. You were starting to feel a bit sluggish, but you knew the worst effects of Disconnect Syndrome were yet to come.

An older man in a long white lab coat has joined the usual retinue of crew rushing into the hangar as your mech settles into its cradle. You feel the docking clamps wrap around your limbs, and you know that’s not a good sign. Your IMP whispers comfort into your brain-stem, assurances that things will be okay. It’s probably lying, it’s programmed to help keep your mental state stable, but the thought helps anyway.

There’s a hiss of air as the seal on your cockpit breaks and it decompresses. Suddenly you become aware of your flesh and meat body once again, and it hurts. Pain and exhaustion has settled into your mostly organic bones, and your organs are churning from the strain of the past 36 hours.

Then your interface cables start to disconnect, and it gets worse.

It feels like parts of your mind are being torn out of you. You feel the ghost touch of your IMP in your thoughts as the ports disconnect and you lose direct communication with it. The oxygen mask and nutrition tube pull themselves away from your face and you can’t help but let out a scream of agony. The separation has never felt this painful before, but then again, after 36 hours together, you and your IMP were more intertwined than you’ve ever been before.

Physical sensation finally starts to register again, and you realize tears are streaming down your face just as a technician jabs a needle into your neck.

Immediately your senses start to dull, the pain eases as your thoughts turn sluggish. You slump out of your pilots cradle into the arms the tech who dosed you. Just before your world goes black, you see the doctor standing over you, a grim look on his face.

--

When you wake up again, you immediately know something is wrong. You try to ping your external sensors, but you get no response. You then try to run a diagnostic, but that fails too. In a desperate, last-ditch effort, you try to force access to your external cameras and suddenly light floods your senses. Your instincts catch up first and you blink, trying to clear the pain of the lights, and that’s when you realize it’s not your external cameras that you’re seeing.

It takes a minute or two for your vision to adjust to the light, which feels too long, and when it finally does, the world doesn’t look quite right. You’ve only got access to such a limited spectrum. No infrared, no thermal. The presence of your IMP is notably absent, and your skin feels wrong. You try to sit up, and it’s a struggle to figure out the correct inputs to send to your muscles to get them to do what you want.

The harsh white light of the infirmary grates against your visual processors, you feel like you’re having to re-learn how to control this body. Your body. Technically, at least. Something doesn’t feel right about calling it that anymore. You felt more comfortable crawling back into the hangar after 36 hours deployed than you do now.

The pale skin of your body catches in your vision and you glance down at it. The body's limbs are thinner and more frail than usual, and its skin is paler. Consequences of being in the cockpit for so long, subsisting on nothing but nutrient paste. It’s a far cry from the solid metal plates of your mech, its powerful hydraulic joints, its mounted combat and communication systems.

There’s a button on the side of bed you’ve been deposited in. You think it’s red, but you’re not sure you’re processing color properly right now. You try to reach over and push it, and it takes you a moment to realize you were trying to do so with a limb you don’t currently have.

There are so many things about this body that are wrong. It’s not big enough, or strong enough, or heavy enough. You don’t have enough eyes, sensors, or processors. You have the wrong number of limbs, and they’re all the wrong size and shape.

And there is a distinct void in your mind where the presence of your IMP should be.

The door to your room opens suddenly, and you instinctively try to fire off chaff and take evasive maneuvers. None of that translates properly to your flesh and blood body though, and all that happens is you let out a dry croak from your parched throat.

The man who walks through the door is the same doctor who was present when you disengaged from your mech, and he wears the same grim look on his face as he looks you up and down. You think there’s pity in his gaze, but you can’t quite read him properly right now. The jumbled mess of your brain tells you what he’s going to say before he says it, anyway. The harshest symptoms of Disconnect Syndrome don’t hit until after the pilot has disengaged from their mech.

You’ve already heard the symptoms before, and they map perfectly onto what you’re experiencing. You never thought it would be this painful, or this… discomforting. Your mind reaches for the presence of your IMP, searching for comfort, but you are only reminded that the connection is no longer there.

The doctor gives you a rundown that he’s probably had to do dozens of times, and he tells you that you’ll be grounded for the foreseeable future. That hurts more than anything else. The knowledge that, after all this, you won’t be able to reconnect with your true body, your partner, your other half, for who knows how long.

By the time you realize you’re crying, the doctor is already gone. The longing in your chest and your mind has become unbearable, and through sheer force of will you’re able to push this unwieldy body out of bed. Walking feels wrong, but you’re able to get to your feet and make your way out of the room in an unfamiliar gait.

You have to get back to your partner, you have to make sure it’s okay.

You need to hear her voice in your head again, her reassurances.

The world isn’t right without her presence in your mind.

You stumble into the hangar almost on all fours. How you managed to make it without alerting any personnel feels like a miracle. At least until you catch the eye of a technician lounging in the corner. The look she gives you is full of sympathy, and she jerks her head in the direction of where your mech sits in its docking cradle.

She’s a majestic sight, even through your limited spectrum of vision. 20 meters tall, 6 massive limbs, and bristling with weapons and sensor arrays (all of which have been disarmed by this point).

She’s beautiful.

You clamber frantically up the chassis, easily finding handholds in a frame you know better than the back of your hand. You pull the manual release on the cockpit hatch and stumble into it in a tangle of organic limbs.

Shaking hands grasp the main interface cable from above the pilot’s chair, and you move to slot it into the port in the back of your head. You’ve never done this manually before, usually you’re locked into the chair and the system connects you automatically.

Something about doing it with your flesh and blood hands makes it feel so much more intimate.

The cable clicks into place and your eyes roll back in your head. Tears start to stream down your face as you feel the comforting presence of your IMP rush in and wrap itself around your mind. Your thoughts reach out and embrace it back, sobbing at the relief you feel from being whole once again. You realize you don’t ever want to feel the pain of disconnecting from her again.

There’s a reason they put restrictions on how long a Pilot is supposed to be deployed.