#dysmorphic

[eye-coded-rat]

(ep2) CAT3RBC1567-23092022-18012024

Transformation (full) -/- dysmorphic [video call]

"a pristine paintbrush design spanned from the interior of my elbow to the inside of my palm, a flurry of colorful floral patterns entwined with symbols I didn't recognize."

Daria's issues with her self-image + being an artist = The artist becomes the canvas, thanks Ink5oul!

Sounds like the tattooing process was INCREDIBLY painful, but there's no aftercare required! That's okay, more time for self-mutilation that way!

Also, the only memorable thing about Ink5oul being their tattoo? "an absolutely gorgeous floral serpent design running up their arm and into their neck that was so vivid it looked ready to slither off their skin and onto the chair." Real Looking Snake, tell me your secrets.

[clementine-thedestroyer]

John Price is the type of guy to always push the scale all the way to the back of the under-the-dresser realm it’s been banished too. He also puts away your measuring tapes every time he finds them outside of the sewing kit. He knows what you were probably doing, and as unhappy as he makes him, he decides to silently remove whatever tool you’ve been using to judge yourself. Out of sight, out of mind.

He also buys a set of dry erase markers to write sweet little messages on your mirrors so whenever you’re looking at yourself, he’ll have at least his words with you to remind you of his love.

[warm-autumn-evenings]

scars are normal. scars are a physical proof of your body’s ability to heal. scars make it known that you’re alive. you’re marked by life. the raised scars, the keloids, the scars people stare at you for. they’re a visual map of your life & nothing more. scars have no morality scars don’t reflect on the morality of your existence. media loves to portray scars on monsters and villains and leave the heroes to be unmarred, but that narrative does not apply to real life. you’re a whole human being worthy of being seen, loved, respected.

[bunnighost]

[lostmf]

I wish I could stop counting every bite ..

[bpdpotato]

Being ugly actually ruins your whole mood, I can't even sit in peace without thinking about how disgusting I actually look.

[yearningsaphic]

Does anyone else look in the mirror long enough and examine your features to the point where you start to get physically nauseous? Just me? Ok

[lia-anne]

Skinny waist September. Small arms September. Slim thighs and leg September. Super model slim September. St@rving September

[sunsetsandhope]

daily reminder, food is not your enemy, the number on scale doesn't define you as a person, the size of your clothing has nothing to do with your personality, and if you struggle with ed, recovery, body image issues or body dysmorphia, i hope it will pass and one day it will become a distant memory for us.

[plumerii]

omfggg. i knew i liked this guy

[aloevista]

I wish it was normal to just wear a mask your entire life. Like a full face mask. I’m tired of people being able to witness how grotesque I look. I don’t even want to have to see my face when I look in the mirror because it ruins my entire day. I’d be so much happier if I could just hide it. While I’m at work, when I shower, while I sleep, I don’t want it to be possible for myself or anyone else to end up catching a single glimpse of it. I don’t know how my boyfriend can even stand to look at me, let alone love me, when he’s so pretty and I look like an actual monster 

[bunnighost]

[lostmf]

I am losing sight of reasons to not kill my self

[jewishrat420]

Eddie Munson doesn't know what he looks like.

Sure, when he looks in the mirror, he sees a guy with shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes to match. He sees two arms and two legs and a scar-crooked smile.

He sees all the parts that he has, all the parts that he knows he's supposed to have.

And he's capable of recognizing that they belong to him. It's not like he thinks he's inhuman, some beast of otherworldly nature.

(At least, not on good days.)

It's just... well.

Sometimes, when Eddie looks in the mirror, all he can really see is his face.

Like, sure, he can see the rest of his body. He knows his face is attached to the arms and legs that he's capable of recognizing in some separate, distant sense at some separate, distant time.

But when he tries looking at himself as a whole (after buying himself a full-body mirror to hang on the back of his door), it's like his face alone is magnified a hundred times over.

Like all he can see are the hollowed-out sockets where his eyes sit, the heavy flush of his cheeks, how stark it is against the rest of his pale skin.

It's like he zoomed in too far and got stuck there, unable to refocus and look at the picture as a whole.

All he can see is each individual pore that travels like a lightning rod through his skin. All he can see is the curve of his nose and how big it looks when his brain doesn't recognize its place on the rest of his face.

It's like he sees each feature individually. His eyes are miles away from his lips, his chin and forehead a stretch farther than that of the sun to the moon. Hopelessly revolving around each other in the desperate attempt to cross paths, understanding the inevitable and fighting against gravity to change it.

He recognizes that he has a face. That his eyes and nose and mouth and cheekbones and pores all belong in the same place, on the same body, to the same person.

But it's like there was a wire cut somewhere in his head. Like the connection that reminds him that all those separate parts actually go together was severed. That reminds him he's more photograph than Picasso, less alphabet soup and more a well-structured sentence.

It's worse when he looks at his body.

Because there's so much more to it than to his face. There are so many parts, so many varied pieces that somehow fit together and make him the gangly, skeletal, off-center human he knows himself to be. The sack of bones and blood that moves when he tells it to.

He looks in the mirror and sees his arms, how they hang and where they fall. And then it seems like they keep going, and rather than focusing on where they end (just above the jutting curve of his waist), all he can see is how little space there is from the tips of his fingers to his feet.

And then his arms look ten feet tall, stretched out to fit the entire length of his body, and when he turns away from the mirror, he swears his nails are going to drag along the carpet.

He doesn't know why he feels like this, but he knows he's been this way since he was a kid. He didn't know it was any different than how everyone else felt, assumed in that childlike way that he was just like all the other humans on this planet.

And then, one day, Wayne told him he should probably trim his hair. Said it was getting real long.

And Eddie had looked at him, confused, because his hair hadn't really grown for as long as he could remember. Kind of just stayed the same length, always at the same place on his body.

So Wayne led him to the tiny, clouded mirror in the yellowed bathroom of the place he'd learn to call home, his calloused hands big on Eddie's shoulders. He'd trailed a path with his finger from Eddie's scalp all the way down to the middle of his back, drawing a horizontal line where his hair ended.

"See, Eds? S'all the way down your back."

And Eddie remembers seeing this, even today. Remembers how confused he felt trying to connect what he saw in the mirror with the image his brain was showing him. Fighting reality with his own imagination— a battle he would soon learn cannot be won.

Because his hair did fall halfway down his back, objectively.

But it was also three feet off the ground, too, and that's pretty high up.

So it must not have been too long after all.

Because it still didn't look long, not to Eddie, not until years later when he and his uncle would bring out one of the scrapbooks and he'd finally see what the rest of the world did, if only for a moment.

It was then that Eddie learned he'd never quite see the world the same as everyone else. The way it was meant to be seen, by people who were meant to see it.

He'll see what's really there, eventually, but only after that version of him is no more than a fleeting memory. Only after he's adjusted to the way he looks in the present, to the vision his distorted eyes show him when he enters the hallway of mirrors.

It gets worse with the scars.

Because now his brain has something else to play with. Something else that convinces him that the thing whose limbs move around when Eddie tells them to isn't actually the person he calls "himself."

That they're actually three separate entities:

Eddie Munson, Eddie Munson's body, and the Thing That Calls Itself Eddie Munson's Body.

Three separate things, none of which have ever existed in the same world, let alone in the same person.

It doesn't bother him. Not always.

He doesn't need to know what he looks like, as a whole, the way other people see him. That's not for him.

No, Eddie Munson's Body is for the people that turn away when they see it in the grocery store. For the people who will peer upon its pale face in an open casket and mourn the thing that was inside it. The thing that Eddie knows to be himself, the thing that's begging to be seen for what it is.

But there's not much that can be done about it.

And most of the people in Eddie's life are there for him, for his brain, for the thing that floats inside Eddie Munson's Body. They don't care about what it looks like, only that He's in there.

Still, sometimes when Eddie looks in the mirror, he thinks he sees it. Him.

Eddie inside Eddie Munson's Body, hidden behind the Thing That Calls Itself Eddie Munson's Body.

He thinks he sees it, him, buried somewhere deep. Small, naked, crouched in the corner. Shaking with its hands clasped in front of its chest like it's praying.

He wishes he could do something. Wishes he could reach in and grab it, hold it in the palm of his hand (the one that really belongs to him, the one that he can see) and nurture it until it's bigger than the Thing, bigger than the Body, bigger than the whole world.

Big enough to be seen.

But every time he tries, it disappears like sand between his fingers.

So he gives up.

He drags his nails on the carpet and cuts his hair when Wayne tells him to.

He fills the Thing That Calls Itself Eddie Munson's Body and plasters a smile on the face he thinks is his.

x

original post

[oh-my-pastel-goth]

✨🩷 dissociation vibes ✨🩷

[lia-anne]

Ana August didn't go well. Please let super skinny September go well.