I’ve never put on a sparkling facade, the type to make me easier to digest.

My mother is all polish.  She does her hair for hours each day.  Never goes to the grocery store without makeup.  She has outfits.  I have day sweatpants and night sweatpants.  I rarely put on makeup and when I do, I feel fake, like there is something I want to hide.

There cannot be a facade.  Every day, our door opens and shuts and opens and shuts.  Therapists come in and out.  They question what I did to help, how things have gotten better, if I am doing anything.  It is an incremental invasion, my life slowly not my own at all.

Its a vanishing act.  I wake, eat, do therapy for hours, make meals, work, go to bed and repeat.  I barely see myself when I look in the mirror any more.  The reflections I have, the images of me are taken and they feel like weapons.  How I’ve gotten so old, so fat. A self-portrait felt like a kindness, a marker.  It’s been years but I see you.

Even with your frown lines and grey hair, I see you want to dive into the ocean.
Even with the weight that has crept up like a weed, you want to throw your german grandma arms around the people you love.
You want to laugh loud even if it embarrasses your children.
You don’t want to be a slick exterior package, pretending that you are one thing.
Your outside already lies about what is beneath.
Inside you are still a little bit young, a girl, full of wonder and laughter, not wanting to cover it all with paint.

I am not a before and after.  When others look at me, I sometimes see they would like me to tell a redemption tale.  I am not really ready for public consumption.

I am starting to understand it though.  The impulse to cover and hide.  The desire to mask and shield.  The armor that is necessary.  The years, they march forward.  Skin becomes thinner and thinner until it becomes translucent.  I think people see through me.