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Personal Essay Written For: BDD Foundation
MY VANITY CURSE
August 9, 2024. | 1010 words
Once an impossible dream, here I am lounging outside in the midday sun.
I’ve not checked the mirror today, though I’m not quite bare-faced because I’m still wearing yesterday’s makeup. I haven’t gotten so far in my recovery that I can just grin and bear it all. Day-old makeup is a step in my desensitisation process. Still, I’m acutely aware that someone could stroll up the path and see me raw.
My husband approaches and I fight the instinct to shrink away. Instead of increasing facial camouflage, I slip my glasses up to form a hairband. This is not entirely innocent, rather a reconfiguration because I’m covertly concealing my hair parting. My hands jerk to cover my face, though I keep them on my book until the sensation fades.
Seven years ago, four layers of window-dressing shrouded me in perpetual darkness. Facing daylight demanded days of preparation, fighting through rituals, as I struggled to make my face publicly acceptable. I would wash and reapply makeup until my skin burned, rendering me housebound and without groceries for yet another day.
At the height of my struggle, I wore sunglasses until friction blistered my nose and ears, their arms hooked on for dear life. Even those lesions became part of my camouflage, a temporary deformity I rationalised as diverting attention from my perceived imperfections. But instead, BDD was trying to manifest itself in physical ways, to prove, look, I am deformed.
When at my local Sainsbury’s, the security guard asked, “Why the sunglasses indoors?” I replied with a rehearsed excuse, “I’m recovering from surgery.” Then I avoided that store for a year, driving 45 minutes out of my way for a pint of milk.
After waiting 22 years to “grow out of it,” as my friends assured me I would, I self-prescribed an exposure exercise: a bodybuilding competition, because once I’m lean then I’ll be happy, right?
Over four months, I trained six days a week. Then, during peak week, I chugged 6 litres of water daily and tapered my calories down to 450. I stepped on stage, abs defined, my face thinned out, and I made it into the top ten, only to realise I’d built a body as unhealthy and unsustainable as the pills I popped. My bikini sparkled, my skin glistened, and my stage makeup concealed a dark truth; my lips had turned grey from injecting myself with unregulated tanning agents.
BDD learned to exist on a new frequency, and I judged myself on an unreasonable scale, measuring body fat by the millimetre whilst swallowing dodgy fat burners and diuretics. After I binged my way back to normal, a real medical crisis erupted one morning and sparked a dilemma: Do I call an ambulance or apply makeup?
I imagined the paramedics, revolted by my face, and decided to leave them something nicer to look at. It’s better to be dead wearing makeup than to show my raw face in public.
I wobbled to the bathroom and set out my instruments. If I died doing eyeliner, it would be the most honest way to go.
Stumbling into the GP’s office the following day, the medical form asked, “What is your eye colour?” I had no idea; I hadn’t seen my eyes in daylight in over two decades since I closed my curtains at thirteen. And with nobody to call because I had ghosted myself into reclusivity, I had to guess the answer: blue?
Lacking a proper vocabulary, I shared how I injected myself and took under-the-counter supplements, meanwhile remaining silent about my two-decade mirror obsession because, to me, it was nothing more than a “vanity curse,” my shameful, dirty little secret.
Discovering The Broken Mirror by Dr Katharine Phillips finally put a name to my situation: Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). I was eager to consult Dr Phillips, except she was in America and I was tethered to my mirror in Britain. Even if I could get beyond my pre-travel rituals, flying had become an excess baggage nightmare, requiring me to stow mirrors, lights, and window coverings.
My recovery began with a single decision: to peel away the layers from my windows. Inch by inch, I unravelled the blinds and peeled back the curtains, shielding below a ball cap or behind sunglasses, taking small steps forward and then retreating, until I could finally face myself. All the while, audiobooks, movies, and music distracted my self-criticising voice.
In 2019, I flew to New York to meet Dr Phillips. Her diagnosis gave me new self-awareness, and I came away with a surprising side diagnosis: non-purging bulimia, another bodybuilding souvenir.
Today, I’m happily married and settled in Washington, and my active recovery is structured around these core practices: I restrict my makeup routine to just 15 minutes, and I often glance in the mirror no more than twice a day, occasionally forgetting until evening. I avoid interacting with my reflection when outside my home, hyper-vigilant of every reflective surface. Headphones replace sunglasses, and audiobooks not only provide a distraction, but have given me back my voice.
A year ago, in my journal, I recognised a tone change. I called it “Bogey Maid,” inadvertently giving my BDD a name and separation. Now I turn my scars into stories.
Moments ago, I finally checked my mirror. Close to the window where I can see my blue-grey-green, colour-confused eyes. I recognise my face looks normal, adding another increment towards recovery.
Sitting here right now, the warmth I feel is not a flush of embarrassment or shame, just a friendly kiss from the sun.
Thirty-five years of worrying about my face, chasing superficial fixes, and hiding behind camouflage led to nothing but isolation where I tiptoed near death. But just one inch of daylight led me here, to my husband, my cat, and a life.
I still have a way to go before I can sit in a hair salon and not blur my eyes in front of the mirror; however, I no longer stress over bad hair days, I just swish my glasses into the hairband position.
Written by Carrie-Ellise Poirier © Copyright 2024
fiction Sample
The Kingdom of Brunel
2021 | 1552 words
Jenna and Jules gaze upon the entrance to the promenade saloon.
Double doors, drenched in black tar emulsion, might be commonplace if not for its gilded embellishments. Eyes glued upon the golden coat of arms, the darkened surface fades from view, leaving them hypnotised by a lion and unicorn playing tug-of-war with the glimmering SS Great Britain motif. Below the insignia, the date of its second maiden voyage, July 26, 1845, is inscribed into a bronze plaque.
The lion prowls larger and closer. Jenna paws at her blurry eyes, and pfffoof, it vanishes into a pink haze. She stumbles back a few paces as the left door swings ajar and nearly amputates her nose. Her eyelids flutter away the fuzziness and, a woman, draped in a salmon-pink polonaise, brightens the open doorway.
Calcified under layers of chalky foundation, her face is indistinguishable from the waxed sculptures. Her immobile corseted torso glides atop a bustling peplum skirt. Bewitched by her sweet peach aroma, the girls watch as her buoyant crinoline cage springs through the doorframe and bustles down the hall.
Jenna smirks, “I think Ms. Whiting wears the same makeup.”
“Maybe that is Ms. Whiting.”
“Nah, Mr. Bumfluff isn’t scurrying behind.”
“Perhaps he’s under her skirt.”
They fold into a giggle.
Parading through the threshold, arms braided like Siamese twins, their feet canter in lockstep to the squelching of rubber soles kissing the burnished timber surface. They weave in and out amid the white enameled pillars and stacks of scarred and mauled crates. Their heads pivot left and right, with passing glances at the c-scrolled frames and murky, noduled portholes.
The deck is alive with the smell of marine salt, and the echoing white-noise of swishing liquid. Reflections cast rippling iridescent veins of light, like foamy seawater lapping over the surfaces.
They chuckle as they pass a frenzied congregation of grossed-out visitors, ten or more, squeezed into and around the slender doorframe of sickbay. The stench of fabricated vomit clogs the air, causing the visitors to retch behind hand-masks. The room blinks white light, simulating the mechanical snap-snapping of cameras. Meanwhile, an ailing sculpted passenger bunches over a bedpan, her beeswax body immortalised in a never-ending purge of bisque-sodden liquid.
Reaching the ship’s stern, the girls careen around the central glass dome, toward the starboard side. Tables align parallel to the ashy-grey hull, and a crimson upholstered bench snakes around the ship’s rounded rear.
They dump down next to the wax veneered sculpture of the ship’s legendary engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. His hands grip the lapels of his morning coat while his fossilized stare ruminates the tea-stained blueprints laid out before him. The plans, penned into history on July 14, 1837, eternally imprisoned within a plexiglass shield.
Jenna clutches the tall stovepipe hat and plops it onto her head. The hat shimmies down, swallowing her face. Her startled giggle muffles through the stale wool.
Jules snatches the hat and flings it onto the table. “Ew, you’ll get nits, you know.”
Jenna works her fingers through Brunel’s bristly nylon hair fibers.
Jules grimaces,” You’re a dork.”
Jenna’s eyes roll up into her eyelids as she caresses her cheek with an open palm embrace. “He’s my hero,” she says in a breathy tone.
Jules shimmies her tan satchel straps down her gangly arms. She unclasps the buckle and dangles the bag upside down, cascading its contents onto the table. A mauve spiral-bound journal, a rose-quartz encrusted mechanical pencil, a dual-purpose eraser, and a sprinkling of blue and white eraser crumbs emerge.
As she blows an avalanche of rubber particles onto the floor, a candle flame flickers inside its glass sconce. It withdraws into itself and into the darkness of history. All that remains is a surge of smog wriggling up and out of the glass horizon line.
Jenna picks up the wad of photocopied newspaper clippings. The 1843 headline reads ‘The SStuck Great Britain’s Un-maidened Voyage.’
She grabs the rose-quartz pencil from Isambard’s fingers and scribbles across the page, ‘I wish I’d been there.’
As she stabs a full-stop into the paper, the lead snaps, its graphite fragment pings as it ricochets off the steel rafter. A candle blinks and departs. Then another. And another. The lanterns strobe, provoking shadows to twitch all along the deck.
Sharp pop-pops anounce the death of light. Wide-eyed, they strive to find eachother in the grainy blankness.
And silence.
With the ship now devoid of life, the only reassurance of its substance is the supportive timber beneath their feet and the lingering fried odor of tallow.
Disturbed air brushes against their tangled bodies.
“Please tell me this is one of your pranks,” Jules whispers, as her hairy, nubbed arms cling to Jenna’s torso.
Finally, the ship’s iron skin groans, sending shockwaves through the shivering floorboards. A whimpering howl terrorizes the air, causing ropes everywhere to clink and thrash against anything metal.
The jingling interior settles and, one by one, blades of dazzling light jut through the portholes, puncturing the darkness.
As the girls unravel their eyelids, smog enshrouds them from behind.
As if from nowhere, three dapper gentlemen, costumed head to toe in seven-piece ensembles, confer in private on the port side.
The stubby fellow thrusts a palm to the table. “My dear fellows, I am very busily engaged. I pray keep out of my way or I will certainly do you a mischief. You have tried my patience so completely.”
The two fellows apologetically doff their hats and make their way towards the spiral staircase. They clamber up the steel steps and disappear into the ship’s cavity.
The distracted gentleman moseys, smoke trailing him like a ghosted scarf. “Quite extraordinary,” he says through cigar-clenched lips. Cocking his head, he studies something. He moves a glistening object into a dusty sunbeam and swishes a brass pocket lens towards his eye.
“I dare say, this instrument is beyond reproach.”
His head convulses with billowing smoke as he hacks and gags into a fistful of cauliflowered fabric. A shriveled cigar and shimmering rod hurtle onto the floor.
“Jules, look, it’s your pencil.”
“Well, he can keep it now he’s got disgusting phlegm all over it.”
His hands rummage about his torso. With forceped fingers, he retrieves a ruddy threadbare case from his waistcoat pocket. His squat thumb nudges the end cap onto the table. He pounds the box against the oak surface, peers inside, and grunts.
He beckons Jenna to the table. “My dear fellow, do you have a cheroot? I have smoked this cigar case twice empty.”
“No, sir,” she says, “I’m only 13 and…” her face crumples, “I’m not a fellow.”
“Sir,” Jules steps forward, “Please may I have my pencil?” She points toward the floor.
His stocky arm retrieves the pencil from a divot between the planks.
“This finery is a pencil?” He rolls the metal barrel between his fingers. “Well, I never.”
“Finery? It’s just a tacky £25 piece of metal.”
“Twenty-five pounds?” He harrumphs and puffs his chest. “Why, you must be of royal blood to afford such decadent trinkets. Please, pardon my deplorable folly, for I misplaced my manners. Do be seated, your excellencies. I have wantonly and wilfully expected an honour such like this.”
Jenna whispers behind a crescent palm, “Has he ever heard of over-acting?”
“Well, you would say that, Prince Jenna.” Jules chortles.
“I assure you I have no mind and am most terribly pinched for money. Should my invention fail, what would follow, I cannot guess. I am looking forward with great anxiety to this, and I don’t speak with a very placid temper.”
He shakes the pencil and drags its sheath over the parchment. The metal nib scratches and snags the paper. As if in unison, the ship grumbles, and a sooty stink pollutes the air. A lamenting whine emanates from the ship’s foghorn, united with a faint undercurrent of bugles triumphantly tooting.
“Oh, no, it’s happening again.” Jules’s fingertips drain to alabaster as she clutches the table leaf waiting for darkness to follow.
The gentleman bolts to attention, hands gripping the lapels of his morning coat. “Oh folly, His Royal Highness Prince Albert has commenced advancement. Here I am, laid up useless and tardy in my criminal laziness. I must take my leave.”
He tugs at his jacket, dips his hat, and shuffles in reverse towards the spiral staircase. With each step, he nods and tips his hat like a Bobblehead.
“Prince Albert? Surely he means Prince William or Harry.”
Bemused, they charge toward the portholes.
Outside, they see antique Union Jacks flap and ripple in every direction. Thousands of people, flamboyantly dressed, flank the dockside. Ladies cradled in shawls and ruffles, and gentlemen adorned in tophats and cravats. In the marina, dozens of small paddle boats glide across the rippling surface like giant water striders. Inhabitants occupy every space. Even roofs hold crowds of onlookers.
An assembly of gentlemen raise their top hats to the frenzied crowd, heralding the approaching duo of milky beige horses, draped in leather straps and towing a stately black and gold stagecoach.
Bells chime. A canon blasts a shell into the universe and a plume of smoke juts from its nose.
As the smoke clears, a suspended banner unfurls between two industrial rigs, its script touts, “Launch of the Great Britain SteamShip, July 19, 1843.”
Written by Carrie-Ellise Poirier © Copyright 2021