I got home and started to wash my hands. Each sud-filled motion squished between my palms, around each finger, under my nails, down to my wrists, and then I watched it swirl down the drain.

I glance up at the mirror. My eyes shift from the hairs I didn’t pluck around my eyebrows, to the width of my jaw, down lower to my belly. They would have continued their vicious trek if the mirror were longer.

My body was no longer whole. Each piece was like a puzzle that I was examining, turning in my hand, squinting to see where it fit. With clinical precision, I absorbed, evaluated, and ultimately moved on with a Miranda Priestly disapproval.

Last summer, I switched birth control, and a darker patch of skin bloomed across my forehead. Melasma - pregnancy mask. It happens due to sun damage combined with extra estrogen floating around in my body. At first, I thought it was cute, a few freckles, but slowly it merged and grew, taking over my sizable forehead with its presence. I look in the mirror and it seems to grow even bigger.

When I gain weight, it tends to show pretty quickly in my lower face. My jaw widens, and from the side, there is a gentle slope from the tip of my chin down to my neck. No delicious 90-degree Bella Hadid angle.

I adjusted my leggings and saw my belly jiggle. It wasn’t a real jiggle, not one of those sexy Renaissance-type bellies. It was more like when you slap a water mattress and you see the wave travel in all directions, running away from you.

I sigh in disgust.

Some days, I find that I cannot see myself, cannot absorb myself fully. Instead, I see this unsatisfying amalgamation. And the more access I have to a mirror, the less happy I am.

In tenth grade, I would watch Victoria’s Secret shows, study their walks, and then on my way home from school, I would strut through my neighbourhood, heel in front of toe. I walked on a tightrope, convincing myself that if only I walked better, I would finally be beautiful and be loved.

When I accidentally lost 3kg, going from 62kg to 59kg, simply by travelling through Europe and not really having hunger cues, I was thrilled. Even more so when I got back, and my dad looked at me, horrified, saying I looked sick. I gloated in my success.

But I knew I could not actually try to lose weight; I was only satisfied because it happened accidentally. I could, with a clean conscience, deny that I was sick.

Growing up, my mom was constantly on some sort of crash diet, eating heaping plates for months and then suddenly deciding to eat a maximum of 800 kcal a day. I tried to tell her that it wasn’t healthy, but deep down, I think I was being a hypocrite. “It’s just baby weight, I could never lose it after my third pregnancy”, her and my dad would insist.

I’ve noticed that in my culture, people are a lot more at ease commenting on people’s bodies. Someone they haven’t seen in months, they might look at and say, “Hey! Wow, you’ve lost so much weight!”, or the more dreaded, “Hey! What happened, you’ve gained so much weight!”. No ‘how are you’, no polite indifference.

My cousin had lost a lot of weight a few years ago, her skin was pulled taut over bones that jutted out from every corner of her body. Her long, bleached blonde hair straightened and swishing from side to side over protruding vertebrae as she walked. To me, it was clear that this was more than a diet, and yet my mom, my aunt, my grandma, my grandpa, every single person in her life found it acceptable to tell her she looks unhealthy and she “just needs to put on more weight!”. I wonder if she secretly gloated at those comments, too.

When I was a little kid, no more than 12, I got an invite to my local competitive swimming team. I found out when I overheard my dad talking to his (male) friends about how he didn’t want me to do competitive swimming because then my “shoulders would be too wide”.

Of course, my parents would tell me that I was beautiful, but somehow the abstract concept of beauty falls apart when specific examples of ugliness are pulled easily and without much thought, like dirty laundry being thrown into the washing machine.

Sometimes, I do really think I am beautiful. I love the colour of my eyes, the dark, bouncy waves my hair forms naturally in humidity. I love how tall I am, and often wear heels to be even taller. I really love my “broad shoulders”. I love my boobs, my butt. Even better than physical appearance, I love being able to run, to rock climb, and most importantly to dance!

When I dance, the puzzle pieces come together into one united machine, taking long to tire, bouncing from foot to foot, feeling my heartbeat sync to the music. It starts as a tiny spark somewhere behind my belly button and shoots in every direction, lighting up my fingers, shining out of my eyes. It warms my body, loosening up the joints, expelling the stiffness. My never-ending inner monologue quiets down and harmonises with the melody. For a moment, my soul expands past the boundaries of my body and becomes one with something too ancient to put into words.

When I dance, I could not give a single damn about that apostate mirror that forgets to reflect the divinity that fills me with every movement of my body.

buy me a coffee <3