Perhaps, Ugly

We checked into the hotel this evening, and was only in the room a brief time before heading out to meet Baby Brother at a local Thai restaurant in downtown Minneapolis (Ginger Hop). We only had time to run a brush through our hair to fix our ponytail, but in those brief seconds we saw more of us, on the outside, than we have in months.

We don't own a full length mirror. When we lived at The Mother's for the last year we didn't have a full length mirror. She doesn't own one. We have two very small mirrors in the house; and a dresser mirror still waiting from it's year and a half in storage to be rejoined with its lower half.

Thinking very little about the feeling in the mirrors we left the hotel, returning hours later.

Standing in front of one of the mirrors we began to disrobe, and dread grew with each layer, while sadness and disgust began to shroud us.

Things we haven't seen in many months. Our naked body.

Despite attempts at losing the weight we have put on over the last year; the 4 to 5 days on the elliptical for 75 minutes at a time, burning an average of 850 calories a session; the cutting out bread almost completely for over a month; the reduction of calories in general...

Ugly. Standing in front of the mirror, ugly. Naked, all of our naked, body and mind. The battleground of our brain, screaming, ugly, from the inside out.

Perhaps it's impossible standards of self, set by having loved the thinness of our body at the most recent sickest part of our life. Perhaps, having gone so long only exposed to the bareness of our thoughts, baring our brain, naked for the world to read.

Luckily hours from now we may awake, and pull the towels and coverings from the mirrors placed there by James in an attempt to calm us, and we shall be someone else, someone who doesn't feel like dying; and stepping outside into the world, we'll pretend we are normal, hide our body beneath clothes, and the horrors of our mind behind our sealed lips. And be beautiful.

Perhaps.

E, C, C, I, F