Me, All Along

When I walk out the door,

I can feel them watch me.

As I take every step,

I see them critique me,

my size, my colour, my shape.

As the road moves on,

I feel the scrutiny increase,

I am hit by the arrows,

shot by their eyes;

they strike me with self-doubt.

But I keep moving on,

Rolling with the pain,

I walk, and I walk.

But eventually,

it all becomes too unbearable to endure.

I stop, and look around me,

intent on silencing everyone with the rage in my eyes.

But, I am hit with shock;

a shock so deep, I can hear the road below me crack,

'Cause there is no one around,

not a soul in sight.

And then it hits me,

that since God knows when,

there has been no one at all.

It had been me, all along,

who had been doing the scrutinizing and the critiquing;

The one firing all the arrows.

The irony isn't lost on me.

I ask myself - why?

Why did I do this to myself?

Was it because I was bullied

About my weight?

Was it because I was told

No one would ever marry me,

'Cause of the way I looked?

Was it because,

this is what the society taught me to do, since the day I was born?

I fell into the downward spiral,

Of body-consciousness and self-hate,

And I fell with such force,

I lost all idea of above and below,

The fall was all I knew,

The pain was all I felt.

And it embedded itself,

in the crannies of my heart.

And convinced me,

that no one would ever want me or love me.

In that moment, I became my own jailer -

The tortured and the torturer.

But alas, it is time to stop;

realization is the first step towards change.

You can only break boundaries,

once you know where they lie.

It shall be a whole journey in itself;

learning and unlearning;

Loving yourself, instead of hating.

Learn to fall in love with yourself -

With the shape of you,

the size, the colour, and all of you.