How an Emotional Wreck Looks Like in the Mirror

(c) theodysseyonline.com

Inspired by a prompt on Pinterest: Imagine your emotional scars were physical. Describe how you look.

Underneath the flawless makeup you see me wearing;

The charming smile and the confident gait I take;

Hides a broken and messed up shell of a person.

If only you could see my emotional scars;

You’d see how much I’ve endured;

And what I still have to deal with;

But since you can’t see them;

Maybe I’ll try to paint a picture with words;

I’d describe how I look emotionally in physical terms;

Ignore the perfectly shaped eyebrows;

And the color-powdered eyelids;

And imagine me with sad, puffy, red-eyed face;

Exhausted and stressed by the countless cries;

Imagine my heart literally out of place;

Hanging on by a torn muscle;

The excruciating pain of having to carry a heavy heart;

And every breathing moment brings its own pang;

Tried stitching up my bleeding heart;

And it survived the brutality it suffered;

It’s stronger than I thought;

Only to be ripped out again and again;

Whenever I thought it was all over;

It would start beating again;

Pumping purpose into my veins;

Look at my feet, what do you see?

Smooth skin and well-trimmed nails, huh?

Whereas the soles are all bruised and bloody;

From having to walk on the broken pieces of my life;

My palms are all cut and roughened up;

From having to gather my broken pieces;

And trying to fix them again like a puzzle;

But I’ve learnt the hard way;

That the puzzle changes after every breakdown;

So the parts don’t fit the same way anymore;

The full lip glistening of gloss;

Is sore out of the constant assault of my teeth on it;

Biting it hard to keep myself from wailing in public;

Or exploding when my heart can’t take it anymore;

As for the hair, I’m sure you can tell;

That I’ve hired a lawyer of a weave;

To cover up for my helpless balding-in-progress;

My hair falling off thanks to depression;

My seemingly smooth skin that you see;

Is peeling away due to the canker of stress;

I’m the picture of an emotional wreck;

Etched into a fleshy canvas;

Don’t I appear chubby and healthy?

With a well-endowed figure to go with it;

But I’m helplessly starved and skeletal;

Shapeless.

Whenever you see me smile the broadest;

It’s when I’m sobbing the hardest;

Whenever you see me walking the fastest;

It’s when I’m limping in pain;

Whenever I look so beautiful;

It’s when I feel so ugly;

I wonder how many people would approach

The beautiful ones if they could see the emotional scars

They carry and how broken they are;

Indeed the things the eye cannot see;

Are more real than what it can see;

When will the charade end?

When will the mask come off?

When will the scales fall off our eyes?

So we can see beyond what we normally gaze at;

And appreciate what we usually pay no heed to;

How do you look like with your emotional scars on display?

 

© Josephine Amoako 2016

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