“Self-Improvement” Kristina Morgan

1 SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Kristina Morgan | 1st Place

At my parents’ insistence it began with makeup and the weight of false eyelashes. The disheveled hair I hid behind, tamed and straightened. At six feet tall I was a hanger designers draped clothes on. I twirled in expensive images that women bought, I strutted in skimpy fantasies that men thought were real.

Maintaining model weight I ate only yogurt-covered raisins. At night I dreamed of food— hamburgers and chocolate shakes. I woke panicked, pinching for fat.

It began with a hammer, a few knocks to my elbows left bruises. I was not good at breaking bones. The blow to my leg didn’t do it. Maybe I wasn’t determined enough.

I was better with razor blades, cutting soft stars into my body, carefully drawing straight lines into my forearm and abdomen, never deep enough to require stitches. I felt nothing, as if my skin didn’t belong to me. Like I was a rubber doll. Cutting was a fascination, an empowerment, my body my own. I hated myself at 16.

At 18, I swallowed bottles of Tylenol and Sudafed. My body screamed don’t do it but my mind locked on do it. Overdoses convulsed my life for years. My obsessions had control of me like the scale and the mirror. I was their accomplice.

I left behind the hammer and the blade, not wanting the statement scars made, pain seen in hatch marks scratched into my arm. I felt shame in making my loathing darkly visible. my hurt stepping over my disembodied youth. I can’t remember why I fnally stopped. God didn’t come to me and say, You are better than this. God accepted me, wrapped me in ethereal cotton. My body no longer felt dangerous.

I collect myself. I see out. even breath feels diferent to me, it comes easily. I am not choked with self hate, my obsessions released. I fnally came to this place of calm and grace in a life that is my own.