You look in the mirror and you are not happy.
You twist and contort your body, stretch your skin, fix your hair,
Attempting to mold into how you wish you looked.
You suck in your stomach, flex your muscles,
Yet still don’t feel good enough.
You still feel either scrawny or stout, too tall or too short.
You still feel
Awkward.
You try on seven different outfits, but find that
None of them satisfy your harsh standards.
The jeans fit weird,
The shirt’s sleeves are too short,
The shoes don’t match.
Your room becomes a warzone,
With clothing strewn across the floor and on your bed.
You dare to look closer into your own eyes to
Criticize all the things you hate about yourself.
You think your nose is shaped strange,
Your eye color is boring,
Your pores are too big,
Your makeup is melted off.
The mirror laughs and squeals that you’ll never look like her,
The you that is content with themself,
And rolls its eyes while laughing at the idea of you being good enough.
You feel sick to your stomach.
You stare into the eyes of the reflection that you see,
Questioning why it is yours.
Twitter demonstrates that you’re simply not funny enough,
Snapchat shows you that your life is too uneventful,
Instagram tells you that you’re ugly.
These posts are brainwashing you,
And you begin to think you are utterly insignificant.
These illusions of perfection are just that,
Illusions.
The only way to suppress the pain is to halt the
Watching,
Clicking,
Sharing.
Otherwise, you forget all of your
Blessings,
Beauty,
Experiences,
Qualities.
All you can see are
The things you don’t have,
The flaws that devour you constantly,
The adventures you haven’t taken yet, and
The qualities you seem to lack.
Everyone posts the edited versions of themselves.
The versions that have skinny bodies,
Filters slapped on,
And
Completely clear, airbrushed skin.
The things you see online are not real,
They are simply hallucinogens,
Each scroll is a drug, making your eyes trick you,
Making you see this perfect persona,
Perfect life,
Perfect EVERYTHING,
When, in all actuality,
No one is perfect and,
We are all wearing masks.
These masks represent who we ache to resemble,
But, why doesn’t anyone desire and squirm to simply resemble themself?
The masquerade is over, it is time to strip ourselves of this burden,
And face reality head on, with your own bare flesh.
Look in the mirror and grin.
Exclaim “I am beautiful”.
Persistently tell yourself,
“I don’t have to change myself, not one bit”,
Because why would you speak of anything but the cold hard facts?
You are
Good enough,
Not too tall or too short,
Not too thin or too thick.
The moment you wake up from this daze,
The moment you realize your own true worth,
Is the moment you can finally become released of your chains and shackles.
You will no longer be a prisoner to the cycle of self hatred and comparison.