Sometimes I wonder if you retaliate when I lash out at you.

Do you know? Are you able to sense it when I sit, staring in the mirror, picking you apart? Do you feel the anger that churns inside of me as you constantly fluctuate – never seeming to settle? Is that why we are so often out of sync?

You’ve failed me when I most needed you. You shut down unexpectedly, leaving me chained to my bed – weak and dependent, forced to watch as life passes me by. You gain weight ten times more easily than you lose it, and you are a constant source of pain. Sometimes you feel like my own personal curse – a lifelong sentence to imperfection in all its forms.

I tell myself I hate you. I pinch and poke at you – filled with resentment for things completely beyond your jurisdiction. I look up the cost of procedures that will alter your appearance, and daydream of a world where you never falter.

I punish you for my insecurities, starving you of nutrients in a desperate chase after the unattainable. I overload you with unhealthy foods when I am overwhelmed by the world – seeking something, anything, that will fill voids too far beneath the surface for me to reach.

I deprive you of rest to meet self-imposed deadlines, and fill your brain with the inane drabble of social media. I let you obsess to the point that you lose all control – collapsing under the weight of unrealistic expectations on your mind, body, and soul.

Yet as I sit alone in silence, the whole world falls away and it’s just me and you. Existing.

This body let me sail across oceans and hike to the highest mountaintops. Your feet danced through the streets of foreign cities, and your knees bent down in thoughtful prayer before the majesty of the rainforest. With the wind on my face as I flew through the sky, you showed me what it truly feels like to be free.

Your voice lets me sing about what’s in my soul. Your mouth has shared my opinions; your tongue, whispered my secrets. Your ears soak in stories and music that resonate so deeply, my heartbeat seems to fall in time with their rhythm.

In your arms I found solace in human connection; with your hands, I’ve held new life so precious that I found “love” redefined. You are the conduit through which I experience this wonderful, messed-up world.

You are both my weakness and my source of strength – my freedom and my captor. We survived the past 25 years together, you and I, and finally – in my 26^th year – I’m learning to respect you.

What a miracle you are – heart beating, lungs breathing…wounds healing, brain learning. I’m sure there will still be days that I find appreciating you impossible, but I wouldn’t be alive without you.

With love in all ways, always,

The girl on the other side of the mirror