JUST PERFECT

DYSMORPHIA:
Noun
-malformation; an abnormality in the shape or size of a body part; also called
dysmorphism
Examples
People with body dysmorphia also feel great anxiety.
Dictionary.com

I have no idea what I look like. The eating disorder has robbed me of the ability to think rationally and to see myself as I truly am. When in public, I obsessively scan the people around me, searching for myself. I ask my companions (behind my hand) if such and such a person looks like me; is my height, weight and shape.

If I determine that a person is fatter than me, I call them names in my head - "fatty, lazy old cow, slob." I'm not proud of my behavior, and I am no kinder to myself. Judging others adds to the abysmal opinion I have of myself and holds in bondage my fellow sufferers.

WE ARE NOT DEFINED BY HOW WE LOOK.

I was born with a birthmark - port wine stain haemangioma - covering the left side of my face eyebrow to upper lip. From the time I was two months old until I was eighteen years old, my mother sought treatment for my facial disfigurement. I underwent dermabrasion every second year from age five to thirteen to correct my birthmark, and went to elementary school every day wearing Max Factor's erase concealer makeup which the company was testing on me. The net result of these years was to leave me feeling like a broken toy, repeatedly being sent away to be fixed.

I always knew what my father thought when he saw me at birth because he wrote my mother an ecstatic letter after he visited us in the hospital. But I always wondered what my mother's reaction was when she first saw me. Was it "What is wrong with her face?" Or did she see her baby first and not just the disfigurment?

My mother remained throughout my childhood and adult life too busy and superficial to engage in a relationship in which I could ask her this question. However, when she was eighty-four years old, my mother already suffering from Alzheimer's disease, had a massive stroke that left her right side materially damaged. I stayed with her in the hospital, and when she went to rehab, I came each morning and evening to help her bathe and dress. For the first time in my life, I was able to have loving, physical interaction with my mother.

One evening after an outing, as I was helping her out of the truck, my mother paused and laying the palm of her hand on my birthmark, she gazed lovingly into my eyes. In the voice of a young mother looking at her newborn child, she spoke. "You are perfect. You are absolutely perfect."

This knowledge that at birth my mother thought me perfect and whole has brought me healing of a very deep wound. Now as I come to terms with the eating disorder that seeks to destroy me, from body dysmorphia that doesn't allow me to know myself, I draw strength from my mother's words.

I am perfect. I am absolutely perfect!