Today was shower day.

I hate shower day.

I have been an anorexic, bulimic, body dysmorphic for as long as I can remember.  I remember intentionally overeating at my seventh birthday.  I remember testing to see how long I could go without food when I was eight, faking a stomach ache to ensure I wouldn’t have to eat dinner.  I remember hating my body before I even knew what all my parts were for, feeling fat inside my still-from-the-little-girls-section jeans.

The sexual abuse started at age six.

The physical abuse started at age seven.

The scars and stains that you cannot see, the ones I’m JUST NOW starting to see myself, are still there.

I really, really, REALLY hate shower day.

On shower day, I have to get naked.  Despite every attempt to the contrary, I have to strip off all my clothes and spend a good ten minutes with my own skin.  I have to look at my body (all of it), I have to touch my body (ALL OF IT), and for that showery, shivery ten minutes I am unable to hide from what I know is there, but what I so very much do not want to see.

Ugly, fat, gross, hated, disgusting, stretched, flawed, dimpled, brokenness.
Read More