Slim Grip on Reality

I hate rooms surrounded by mirrors.

Shop changing rooms –
Bad enough having to try on clothes
Without having to look at myself
Doing it.

Dance studios –
Already feeling awkward and ungainly
Like a seal out of water.
I don’t need to see it.

Gyms –
Having to watch myself sweating,
Pink and out of breath,
Makes me feel ill.

The worst of it is that
You all say I see it wrong.
I “make clothes look great”.
I’m “as graceful as a swan”.
I’m “as fit as an athlete”.

You ask how I can think I’m fat
When I “do over a day of exercise a week”,
Am a “slim size 12”,
You can “see my bones”.

All I see is the bulges (“curves”),
My double chin (“imagined”),
My fat stomach (“washboard”),
My flab (“muscles”),
Myself.

That’s the crux of it.
It’s me.
And it hurts that I can’t see me as you do.
Don’t you think I’d love to?

You can say what you like –
“You’re gorgeous”
“You do a mile in 8 minutes”
“You bench-press 80 kilos”,
But what does it matter
If I don’t hear,
Or can’t understand,
Or don’t know how?

Some day in the future,
I dream of release,
Of seeing myself as you see me,
As others see me.
But for now,
This is the way I am –
I diet, I exercise, I cry.

And I hate rooms surrounded by mirrors.