All I can see in this photo is my back.
Sore skin inadequately covered with concealer.
In November I got the implant, and with it one of the worst dips in my skin problems since I reacted to an antibiotic almost three years ago.
Luckily, three months down the line, the hormones appear to have levelled and my skin is back to the pretty-trash-but-pretty-much-fine state it was in previously. But this, and a ridiculously paralysing fear that I had put on weight made me feel fairly awful during Connor's visit this Christmas.
He didn't care. He didn't care three years ago and he doesn't care now.
But I tore myself to shreds. Both mentally and physically tearing at the skin, scratching, scratching, trying smooth a surface that was never going to be flat.
I didn't take many pictures, not of us, nothing close up.
I stood in front of the mirror and scrutinised my entire body, scrolled through ten years of facebook pictures trying to work out if I weigh more now than I did at 21, at 19, at 16.
Going on the implant was the right decision for me, but with all the warnings, with everyone telling me how my skin was going to get awful and I was going to put on weight, I became obsessed. And even with Connor there, even with foundation on and an incredible dress on, I couldn't relax, couldn't feel attractive.
As I said earlier, my skin has since calmed down. My back is less angry and red. So I am not feeling as horrendous as I did back in December. But I shouldn't need to get more archetype-ly "attractive" to like myself.
I still think way too much about my weight. It shifts from "I have put on weight and I think it might be okay and might look alright" to internal promises to walk more, eat less, cut sugar, run again. Things that, out of my mental context, sound good. But its a punishment. It comes from loathing.
I want to be happy in my skin, happy to be me, happy to have my face, my thighs, my arms.
I don't want to only be happy when I fit that size 8, when my skin is blemish-free.
But I'm not there yet. So instead I am trying to remind myself to eat consistently, trying to spend less time in front of the mirror, trying not to ask fishing, needy comments for reassurance, trying to be kind to myself when I want to bake and eat coconut cake.
No one cares what I look like except me.
When I, or Connor, look back on the photos from that night a couple of years down the line, neither of us will point out my back. Or the soft slump of skin on my arms. We'll just remember love, and dancing to Shirley & Company, the shake of Connor's graffiti marker and our arms round each other.
Because that's what really matters, isn't it?
