I know there have been so many talks about how BDD(body dysmorphic disorder) exists…But how many times have we sat down and asked someone with such an illness about what it felt like? So in the midst of all the chaos that our worlds are surrounded by I felt like it’s important to pen down my own experience as a BDD patient.
It’s not a disease, it hasn’t been considered one by medical sciences but in my opinion, it is. It’s just like cancer except for being physical. It’s mental. It eats out at your insecurities and self-doubts. A momentary lapse of judgment and you find yourself thinking about all the wrong decision you’ve conducted during your existence. It’s just like depression but worse than it.
It’s not about your life worries and what difficulties you’re going through. It’s when you look in the mirror and see something so despicable, so disgusting to your own eyes that you can’t help but cringe in agony. You despise your own physique, looks, features and at times your own flesh and bones and skin. You feel you’re worthless. You’re not worth anyone’s time, affection, love or even empathy.
And that is where it gets worse. When you don’t let someone help yo because you think if they sat too close or touched you, it’d just be a matter of time before they loathe you too. You see yourself and all you wonder is why do I look like this? Why does everyone around me look so much better and I am destined to be this horrifying, someone that each and every being should shun. I don’t know all the reasons and causes for BDD but I knew mine when I was just a teenager. It was always the society, it triggered me to passionately hate myself.
Every time I’d get dressed into something nice and someone would come up to me and say, ‘What did the dress do to deserve you wearing it or something else snarky and snide, eventually causing me to bury my neck in the own shell and discard every good or healthy relationship I’ve ever had. When you’re forced to think that even a piece of cloth isn’t enough to be worn by you. It makes you question everything in your life. And I get how people say that you should not let the words of another effect you and be strong.
But for a girl in her early teens even the girls you call your best of friends trying to degrade you, they can harm you in ways only a few of us can understand. In the Cape of sarcasm, they dwell you into believing there is nothing in this world that can change this feeling, constant urge to self-harm or self. I never tried to hurt myself but I know people who have and why? Because out of a gathering of 15 close people almost 10 would throw remarks and that would hurt them.
I get that for some people it’s a joke but until and unless you are adamant that the person you’re bullying isn’t taking that as a joke. Never do that to anyone. Because God made us all such beautiful and elegant. And no one deserves to question that or their presence in this world. We’re all flawed in ways only we know. So why think that it’s fair for you to be proud and confident in your own skin but not others?
If you don’t like something you see is it so necessary for you to shout it out to the entire world that you that ‘thing’ Why not take a look, seal your lips and walk away? Do some good on your walk to self-correction. And never believe that insulting someone in a humorous way is funny until your sense of is received and returned in the same manner.Be at least this aware of knowing when you’re killing someone on the inside.Wounds won’t always be seen by the naked eye but they do bleed.
