Sunday has just ended, and as the sun begins its battle with the night, fighting for it’s chance to breathe once more, an alarm sounds.
Breaking her from a dream, for once one of pleasure and light where the scale of her fears are small and the height of her desires are reachable, she rubs off the night.
She stretches, relishing the crack of her bones which snap her back into reality, proof she is alive.
The morning craves a simple performance, a ritual if you will, where the same processes of perfection are repeated until the user is still not satisfactory, but content enough to move on.
Brighten the teeth, leaving the after taste of peppermint.
Cleanse the skin from yesterday’s mundanities.
Alter the face till the user sees what is deemed acceptable.
Then, if lucky, she can begin her day.
Each day holds millions of possibilities, yet she falls into the same relentless traps of the world triggering the anxious mind to run rampant.
Nothing is ever good enough, nothing will allow her to breach the walls she is confined in, break the glass ceiling, escape from the inevitable.
Not even the simplest things can bring her joy anymore.
The radio, once full of songs about love are now filled with news of hate, people hiding behind beliefs no loner their own, each lie creating a new scale on the snake.
The television, once filled with interesting stories one could use to escape the world around them is now interrupted with cries of falsities that breach one’s enjoyment and provoke misguided fear.
Simple pleasures such as the enjoyment of a meal are cut short with cries of self deprecation fueled by unreachable standards the mirror cannot recognize.
The pleasure received from a single peppermint now comes with a price tag.
The scale becomes an enemy, never saying quite what is desperately needed to be said, always showing her that she is lesser and unfit for the status quo.
Keeping a meal down becomes a victory in her eyes.
She is so busy that work and play have combined both simultaneously loosing their unique enjoyments, causing an unending cycle of fatigue.
Simple pleasures replaced with distractions.
Intellect replaced with blissful ignorance.
Life replaced with a blur of routine.
She finally returns home.
Her dream did not carry into the day and as she looks into the mirror her reality shifts.
She does not see what the others see.
She sees an image that is wrong and needs to be fixed, so grabbing the first thing in reach of the sink she shoves it down her throat forcing bile to breach her unaware system leaving the aftertaste of peppermint, now sour.
She looks back at the mirror.
That act has allowed her to feel complacent with the inaccurate image presented.
She walks past the scale for the first time that day, and lays in bed.
The moon has breached the sky and is forcing the sun to extinguish its life.
She lays down to sleep, preparing for the routine to start itself again.
