BODy

I am not disabled, I can still walk. 1 feel perfectly
Normal. No kid at the age of 12 should be rendered
this helpless. I am meant to be perfectly normal.
Every doctor I see can't explain why I am the way          

I am. Therefore, I should be ok.  

I was a girl who danced, visited  

white-walled hospital rooms. I remember sitting in a room  

with an old white man. His face bore no features, only  

his mouth had been visible to 12-year-old me when he said,  

‘You'll never dance again, darling’, his spit landing on my face, making a permanent home forever to remain immoveable.  

Sometimes I forget I am real, that I am someone to be perceived. When I'm observing, I forget about other people observing me back;  I watch as people walk by me while I stare blankly into the void. 

I imagine everything when I am looking at them. I imagine their voice, 

some kind of pitch that only they can reach. I imagine what their home 

life is like. Is there a ring? If not, then it’s banker's choice on if they 

live with someone. Maybe if the girl looks exhausted it’s because she must deal with a man at home.  

They tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but who is not  

doing that? Who doesn't look at something and immediately judge it? 

It's mostly unconscious, I think.  

Maybe it's based on the people you've met in the past,  maybe it's what you've read on social media. Maybe this habit doesn't help, that I sit and watch these people going about their lives while I let go of my own. 

Then I'm forced to remember I exist to be perceived;  

when they look back at me, I become this shell of a person.  

What do they see? Do they see what my mirror sees? 

Maybe it's what my phone sees. 

Do they see all my flaws as a person, or do they think the same as I do?

And they play a guessing game as to who I am within this shell of a life left to rot. 

I soon realised I didn't recognise my own body anymore.  

Every crevice, every surgery scar, every acne mark, 

every single tattoo I've gotten drawn on my skin to force 

myself to love these ugly masses of flesh, covering every  

broken muscle and unaligned bone; it didn't belong,  

1 f3lt unhuman.

It fooled everyone but I think it didn't belong. If I

peeled my skin it wouldn't bleed because there is

no real blood beneath this waxy skin.

I gained weight, I looked deformed, like my arms

have been stuffed with c0tton stockings.

My torso fattened with the weight of a girl stolen from

her life, my legs flexible yet stiff.

Y0u can't f1x m3.

You can’t fix it anymore; they are forever unaligned.

That I'm dead? 

That I feel like a ghost watching and waiting like a hollow man,  

waiting for the love of his life only to remember she died  

before her vows? Will her body still dance now that she's a phantom of  

who she used to be? Is she as nimble as a puppet whose body was  

stuffed with cotton and positioned on centre stage,  

with a whole theatre staring at her with prying eyes and hands that  

itch to touch? Why would they wish to touch a dead and decaying woman? 

This feels like a horror story of a monster starved for human skin now stuffed into a human suit,  

with a zipper broken, clothing on her back hiding the truth.  

What even is the fucking truth anym0re?

Thump skrrt ......... thump skrrt ........ thump skrrrt .... 

Stepping towards the white building, this is how my feet sound marching on unstable concrete from all the construction.  

One thumping on the ground while the other lags behind, catching on the rocky ground. I feel tense; I know what will happen in there.  

I'll sit in a waiting room—four hours will go by—I'll sit in a semi-sterile room  

with a new face greeting me with a produced smile, I’ll say everything  

I rehearsed. I'll be forced to lay on a bed and get manhandled by a man so  

many years my elder, but I’ll lie still, letting their hands touch my legs, back  

and hips. I'll sit again and get dismissed by an eloqu3nt surgeon after, 3 It is because they do this  

getting silently belittled for taking a creative writing course.  to every woman, you are no  

I’ll get thrown away outside like rotting trash;    exception, you are hysterical like them.

I’ll limp outside, touching my stomach and leg. I’ll feel worse coming  

out than in, but I'll be back in six to twelve months and I'll do this same routine with a different person. Same surgeon. 

Waiting rooms never felt comfortable;  

too young, too old,  

never fitting into areas built to help me. Crying children in the background, mothers hushing their kids, never fathers, soothing their kids, telling them everything would be ok.  

But would it? Or maybe it will be, but just for them.  

I feel bad ... for the doctors, my mum and maybe for me too. 

Every step I walk is taken in the same direction,  

always trying to move forward but never making any distance.

’One foot in front of the other’, they'd all shout. ‘Keep moving forward, you'll get there’. 

I am … really. 

So why am I not getting anywhere? I still see the same tree, in the same window,  

the same smell occupying my living. I'm walking  

but it's never changing;  

step after step, day after day, it’s all the same, nothing ever changes. When it does change  

it’s brief, like a bird landing on the sill of a window, only they fly away  

after a while and I'll be back in the same world I know but don't enjoy.  

Some say to step off the treadmill, and I've tried but my feet feel like concrete 

and my ankles are torn leather. My knees aren't joined together and my ribs are lent out and returned crooked. My heart is weakening. Flesh is swapped for fabric that is bleeding and my pace is a piece of shattered glass. 

If I stop moving, I'll die but if I keep moving I'll never be granted happiness. 

Am I ok? Will I break this chain? Or will I forever have to live through  

Instagram stories, videos on Snapchat by people  

I used to know, TikToks I scroll past, wishing my life was the same as the girl who looks back at me that isn't looking at me. 

Sometimes I feel like a caged animal in an abandoned zoo. I used to be loved; I used to be watched. I used to see people smile when they looked at me. 

They'd tap on the glass and tell me to do something and I’d comply. 

Now? 

I’ve never felt more alone. 

In a world built on social attraction, I've scratched the glass, screaming for someone to  

come back, but if someone were to break in, they would never see my desperations.  

They'd walk past the zoo, wishing it was back to how it used to be, 

missing how loved the area was. Now no one comes to visit; they'd only look if I was dead and decaying... 

Maybe I should be... 

I feel like I am.  

I never saw myself like this.  

My body torn apart, no cure, no doctor who understands. 

How many years do they learn? How many doctors have I seen? 

Why does no one even know? 

The only solution is for me to lose weight. Do all women feel this way? 

Is this the only way men doctors can help women?  Tell them all to lose weight? 

But when you say losing weight is harder for some because of issues, they don't care. 

Why can't they just care?

One man compared his ACL getting torn to the endless pain I feel every day.  

You can heal, recover. They don't even know what is wrong with me and they won't test. 

I want to rip every single bone out of my body. I want to rip  

every centimetre of skin off this body. To rid every mark off my body.  Cut off my legs with a cleaver, lay me on a table and swing your arm back,  

cut it off. Cut them off, replace them with metal.  

That would be better, no? 

Carve out my intestines, string them up and bleach them.  

Maybe then if they do that this disease will rid itself of my body.  

I wanted to be a ballerina, I wanted to hang out with friends, 

I wanted to have a proper girlhood, I wanted to go to parties, 

hang out with strangers, walk down the road, meet people you'd 

only ever meet when you finally leave the door of your captivity ... 

Just give me one more chance. 

Pl3ase. 3 You will be ok, girl, you soon will be ok, only once you accept 

then you will realise you have never once been alone, just lonesome. You zero in on the pain, you feel singled out but you need to  

turn around. You have not yet turned around. And then you will soon get help. Help can take away the hands from your face like those stuck to mine. 

You don't have to be like me, you will be able to see again, but only if …     turn around, please.  

Now as I sit staring at this baby-pink sculpture, I rethink my entire life. 

I only know of you through a screen, I never got to feel you. 

I wanted to touch the lumps that make up your body.  

I wanted to feel it under my fingertips, does it feel like my skin? 

Do we share more than I thought we did? Are we the same person? 

I wanted to grasp your hand, take it away from your face so you could face this world with me. I'm too scared to do it alone, but if I had you maybe I could do it. 

But you're not here for me to touch or gawk at, wishing I was you.  

You’re lonely too ... hence why you're here, but I don't feel lonely with you. 

Do you feel lonely with me? 

Everyone calls you ugly, 

uncomfortable,  

grotesque, 

unimaginable.  

Some can't even bear to look your way.  

I once felt the same about me. 

I look at you and I see something so beautiful.  

For one mere second, I didn't feel lonely because I looked at you and I saw myself. How does Borland do this?  

Come back, please ... 

Why did you stop answering me? 

Talk to me one last time. 

  1 But you are in so much pain everyday, girl, why do you keep denying something that is not a bad thing? Disabled is no crime.

1 Me too, girl, I understand you, girl, 

we understand each other. You are not  

alone in thinking this, but it does 

not mean thinking this is ok, girl, you will 

be ok.

0 I do not think so.

3 There is beauty to the imperfection of being human. Do you feel? Do you love? Do you lose? Do you make mistakes? You are human. Perfection is boring; you are so much better now that you have flaws. Am I ugly?