Overcoming Body Dysmorphic Disorder - My Story of Living With BDD
Strong, Confident, unbreakable
Weak, broken, fragile
somewhere in between
this is the reality of living with BDD
life exists as a series of adjectives.
today I feel strong, confident, unique
tomorrow who knows
so I live for today, I give up the notion that I have to be perfect to be of value
I accept my flaws as “life marks”
today is a new day
live it
Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.
I look at myself and I feel shame
I look at others and I feel shame
I breath and I feel shame
I exist and this is such a fucking shame.
So shame on me, shame, shame shame.
Its all the same, shame and all the pain and the disgust I feel, I feel so vain, so focused on my shame, when noeone is to blame but the man within the frame.
Yes, indeed I am flawed and therefore unworthy of your love.
I do not belong
I am so alone
I am so ashamed
And in this shame I shall be buried, what a wasted fucking life.
Shame
I bleed from the inside
My organs fill up and choke, suffocated by blood, starving for oxygen.
Now it threatens to overtake my mind.
Each vessel leaks its own toxic mix of blood and bile.
When you bleed from the inside you bleed alone.
There is no bandage to help stop the bleeding
I try to apply pressure, but I can’t find the source
I will die from this
Every day is more of the same
The same self-hate, the same hell, the same anxiety and fear and restlessness
I wish I could want to die because then the bleeding would stop
I hold onto life and let everything else around me go
It is a pathetic sob story, wasting time
So I hope to bleed faster now, until I don’t feel a thing
Then finally the skin will feel soft, my scars will fade away
I will wake up, bathed in light and love and the warming hands of my creator.
photo credit: (Sarah Robinson)
No Matter what I do it is there, it is always there, it is prodding me, poking me, tormenting me.
“It” whatever “it” is has stolen my life.
And you don’t deserve to have it. Who are you anyway and where did you come from?
I am not sure I was ever whole, but how dare you relegate me to the sidelines.
How dare you have the audacity to think you run things here.
This is my life, and you, “it” can go fuck yourself.
I will call you BDD because that is the name they give you.
Honestly, it doesn’t really matter to me, you are just an evil mother fucker in my book who has stolen my life from me.
Yours, is a self conscious, ego-centric world that I don’t live in.
But you have cuffed me and chained me to this.
You are my abuser that I can’t let go of.
And I keep coming back for more.
Somewhere down there deep inside of me there is this small little man.
And he is hurting, and I can’t get to him.
He is in pain and I cannot comfort him.
He needs to be told everything is going to be OK, but he is crying.
He feels more than I do, so I have taken over day-to-day functioning.
I have shut him out, created a box so that I can go on living. But I cannot feel, so I am mostly dead.
The only part of me that lives is in the box and this keeps me going.
Why do you hurt? Why can’t I comfort you? Why are you so afraid?
It is better to be outside the box, because where you are is dark, it is cold and it is a world for the dead.
I cannot live with you inside this box.
I am just a shell, a soulless human being roaming the world looking for guidance.
But in this damaged, soulless self there is life, waiting to be set free.
You are writing this letter, I know you are there, please do not cry you are loved, you need not fear anymore because I’ve got your back. I will hold you and when the world looks upon us, it is you that they will see.
And I will fade into the background where I belong.
A lifeless shell, damaged for sure, animated by the smallest intentions to keep you alive.
So that you may once again be free.
To love, to laugh..
To live.