(CONTENT WARNING – DISCUSSIONS OF BODY DYSMORPHIA)
I saw you. I’ve seen you. Almost every day do our eyes meet for seconds at a time. We’ve seen each other at our most vulnerable. I have sheathed my eyes from your gaze, and I know you have shifted yours from mine. Do we fill the same space or is one larger than the other?
There is a great expanse beyond what you see when I appear, but I remain the same size as you see me. My world grows and grows, and I stay the same no matter how you look at me. From my perspective you are more of your world than the space that surrounds you. Is that how you see me? If I stepped into your world would it be just as massive as my own? Is that it? Is it the same whichever way we face? I am as much a part of you as you are a part of me, so where does the line start? Where do we separate?
I used to hate you. I used to loathe coming home at night and seeing you, knowing no matter what happened that day the sight of you would disgust me. I hung my head and raised my shoulders trying to hide from you because I knew. I knew if I acknowledged you it would ruin me, It would ruin my night or my appetite. I wished you weren’t a part of me then. I would feel your gaze sitting outside of a coffee shop. I would feel your gaze getting drinks with friends. I would feel your gaze walking down the street. It was so fucking pervasive. It became the audience I held, you became the people that used to surround me, and I will always resent you for that.
But I don’t have the energy to hate anymore. I still don’t love you, and I don’t know that I ever will. I still don’t want to see you, maybe now more than ever, but it’s for a different reason. I’ve come to accept that you are me. You always were. Perhaps that’s where the hatred came from.
Grub's Dirt 