As an incredibly self-deprecating child already, it seems I had come across an obstacle. Aside from our singular bathroom, no other space in the house has a mirror. It’s wide and tall, and you can’t escape seeing yourself from your head to your toes. So I don’t use it. My mother and sister both use it promptly each morning before leaving the house: adjusting their outfits or the clothes they’re wearing, but I don’t. If I were to stand in front of the mirror, I know this activity of speculation would become sport, so I seclude myself from the smaller reflection within our restroom as to only speculate on my face: a smaller area to inspect.

    Pinecone colored skin sits upon my back like pomegranate peel. I’m content with my skintone today as I tanned nicely over the summer. I don’t care about skin tone based on societal norms, yes yes, the darker the berry the sweeter the juice, I just care more about how easily my darker complexion exposes my lack of lotion on a very hurried day. I grant myself a sigh of relief. Aside from the ash I know trails down my legs, I’ve made sure to moisturize my face, at the very least, today. I can tell the medication has made me fat faced again, when I smile with no teeth I kinda look like a turtle, but overall I can feel my cheeks are more plump than usual and I hate those damn pills for it. In retrospect, the steroid has subsided the discoidal lupus down my face that I promptly yelled at a classmate for inquiring about. When he said, “What happened to your face?” I gave zero fucks and spoke my mind, for once. Quite a rare occurrence. In all fairness, the darker pigmented  patches of skin weren’t hidden, but I was very much done with people probing about the various whereabouts with my body and so I snapped. And I did feel instantly bad about that, it wasn’t their fault for inquiring of course, but I got on their case and now this anxiety will rule my body until I can redeem myself in some shape or form. I don’t like attention, I don’t want, unwanted, negative attention and now I’m thinking of the possibility of this person maybe telling other people I yelled at them like that or that I spontaneously blurted I have lupus. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a surprise to people as I continuously limp through the halls, with knees swollen up like two sandbags; succumbing to an old womanish wander, or maybe I’ve subconsciously already told people and have lost sight of it. Either way I now linger on the possibilities. Spitting out the frothy toothpaste-saliva mixture into the basin below me, I stood. I smile, and not to my surprise she smiles, though I must admit, the girl in the reflection looks more confident than me. I try to truly see myself with these two almond shaped eyes, windows into the world with a tinted-vellum lens. Yes, I can literally see myself, but it’s like I can see myself but not who I am. Nevermind that, I don’t look outright ugly today, so that’s decent. The pieces of this puzzle, we call life, are slowly but surely coming together, even if I’m kinda cheating sometimes and forcing the paperboard cutouts where they just won’t fit. It seems things are steadily coming together, even if the process is long and slow:

    It took sixteen years of denial, an everlasting identity crisis, until I could finally come to terms between my frontal cortex and my moral compass. Prior to, my body was no more than a carcass, an empty container where a soul, and a heart used to be. Like, before I had temporary amnesia or something, and kept constantly losing track of what I wanted.