Malcontent

My discontent with life is growing more each day. I hate myself, I hate my body, and I wish more than anything I could crawl out of my body. My skin crawls. I feel uncomfortable in it. It literally hurts just being in my own body because of how uncomfortable it makes me. I claw at it, wishing I could cut it off. I’ve considered it. I’ve held the blade to my skin. I just lack the resolve. I lack the courage.

I long to be a mother. It’s something I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. I have always been around children, worked with children, nannied. It’s not enough. I desperately want a child of my own. Yet, I know I can’t support one right now, so I don’t have any children. The timing has never “been right”.  I cry sometimes because of my longing for motherhood.

I want to be self-sufficient and independent. I want to live on my own. I am too sick to work and I don’t make enough on disability to live on my own.

Thing after thing that I lack just builds in front of my eyes until it’s all I can see and I drown in the weight of it all.

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Why I love my Jamberry

Last night I watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother where two characters were signing prenups and one of the stipulations was that the woman had to pay money to the man for every pound she gained. I looked down at my monstrosity of a body, downed a ton of laxatives, and went to bed.

I woke up today seriously dehydrated and with a massive migraine. It’s just now going away (at almost 5am, so it technically started yesterday) and I am feeling restless after spending all day in bed, so I decided to do my nails.

I finished and sat admiring them. Having my nails look nice is the single thing I like about my appearance. It’s the one thing that makes me feel pretty.

If you could see inside my head, you would know it’s not a pretty place. I never think well of myself. But when I look at my nails, always pretty, I feel pretty. For that brief moment, I’m not the ogre, the troll, the gelatinous monster, I am feminine and pretty and have worth and value.

I know these are stupid reasons to love a product, but they are real. And I know my worth shouldn’t be in whether I have pretty nails, but, sadly, it is. And it’s probably the BDD talking, and I get that, but it doesn’t change the truth of my feelings to me.

When I see my pretty nails, for a moment, I transform in my own mind from the beast to a princess.

Life with body dysmorphic disorder

“Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a disorder that is characterized by a distressing or impairing preoccupation with slight or imagined defect(s) in one’s physical appearance.” (NBCI)

One of the hardest parts, in my opinion, of living with BDD is having no clue what I look like to others. Or any clue what like look like period.

I see myself in the mirror, and I see a distorted image, like looking at a funhouse mirror.

Another problem I have is that it’s not consistent. Sometimes, the mirror changes.

The last couple days, my stomach has looked like it’s grown 6 or 7 times its normal hideous size. It looks like looking at myself through the fisheye effect on a camera. A strange, huge, distorted bulge where my stomach should be.

My first thought, naturally, was that I’ve gained a ton of weight. The scale says I haven’t. I weighed myself repeatedly just to check. Yet still, my stomach looks gargantuan and deformed.

It’s not just when looking in the mirror. When I look down at my stomach, it’s the same thing. It’s aggravating and terrifying. It’s confusing. It’s disorienting. It’s maddening.

 Today’s manicure: