Love Yourself.

Such a simple phrase meant to encourage self-confidence and self-acceptance.

Love your body no matter what. Love the way you look. Love the way you talk and walk and even breathe. Love the way people stare at you with disgust when you dare wear something too tight, or too loose. Love the way your mother tells you not to eat that because it wouldn’t do you any good. Love the way you skip breakfast, and lunch, and even dinner sometimes because you’re afraid of what another meal might do to you. Love the way you’re too embarrassed to order something you might enjoy eating, in front of your own friends and family. Love the way your reflection haunts you and makes your hands turn into claws that scratch and clasp at you skin hopelessly. Love everything, right?

A girl stares into the mirror, and she can’t smile.

Her sisters are waiting outside to see how the dress fits, and she can’t go out, because it doesn’t. The dress doesn’t fit. It won’t go past her thighs, and it should, because it’s supposedly her size, right? She was a size 18 in the last store, so why won’t this one fit her? She starts yanking the dress up aggressively, desperate to make it fit her. The model made it look so amazing. So gorgeous. So beautiful. So effortless. Why did she have to try so hard? Why won’t it go up?

Her arms hurt from yanking for so long, and a sob escapes her plump pink lips. No. She wouldn’t cry. Not here, in a changing room, where someone would certainly hear her. Where her sisters might hear her and ask her things, things she wouldn’t be able to answer. Like why she was crying. Or why she wouldn’t come out. Or if the dress fit. Or if she needed help. She needed help, but the humiliation was too much.

This was the fifth store, and still, nothing.

Nothing fit her. Nothing.

She wanted to be nothing. She wanted to be thin air – that way everything would fit her. That way, she wouldn’t take up so much space, and she wouldn’t hate her reflection – because, she wouldn’t have one. She could stare into the mirror for hours and hours, and not absolutely detest what she saw in it.

Love Yourself.

The chant of those atrocious words haunts her every morning she wakes up in sweats, afraid it’ll never be true for her. Terrified she will never, in fact, love herself completely and fully. And what if she never does? Will that mean others will never love her too? Will she never be worth more than a mere look of disgust or apathy? She hopes not. She prays not.

Love Yourself.

She hears a tear, and her heart stops. The dress didn’t fit. It was ripping apart because it couldn’t hold her in. It couldn’t keep all of her in. The dress wouldn’t fit, and she would have to walk out in shame, announcing the fact that once again – nothing fit her. She would see her sister’s face scrunch with frustration, irritation at the ridiculous situation that kept presenting itself no matter what store they went to. No matter what fabric, or design, or size. Nothing ever fit her.

Suddenly the dress had teeth, and the girl didn’t move. Half her body now stuck inside the mouth of a beast that couldn’t eat her. The beast couldn’t eat her because she was too big, and the teeth, they clawed and bit down hard on her peach thighs, but to no avail. Like a mouse on a trap, she stood still in that beast. The room surrounded by mirrors on every side – every wall – and she cursed the wretched architect that decided this was a good idea. The architect that must have been Narcissus himself for the number of mirrors they installed in here to see themselves at every angle. No matter where she turned, there she was again. Her almost pear-shaped body taunted her. It laughed at her, and made her appear foolish and gargantuan, like running through a house of mirrors – except this was really her form. She wasn’t standing around funny, distorted mirrors, she was truly this way. Hideous and strange, and impossible to squeeze in. Impossible to hold.

When she heard her sister’s laughter from outside, she furiously wiped the tears from her rose cheeks. Her reflection stood before her, face unaffected by her tears. There she was, wasn’t she? She wondered if, across that reflective barrier, the other her hated her too. Did she too stare into the mirror and cry? Or was she uncaring? Inside, she knew it didn’t matter. She still hoped that at least her own reflection loved herself. Somebody had to.

The girl reached her right hand out, placing the warm flesh flat against the coolness of the mirror. Inside this room of reflections, nobody could see her but herself. Nobody could laugh at her, but herself. Nobody could tell her not to eat, but herself. Nobody could tell her to love the way she looked, or walked, or even breathed. Nobody could say it, and so she didn’t have to do it in here. She didn’t have to love herself.  Not in here.

She didn’t have to love herself. She would be fine.