Some photos and my body dysmorphia

I got a new dress and I was pretty excited to put it on. I wanted to take some nice photos in it but it didn't go very well.

This is the thing that's so shit about being mentally ill; I WANT to do things but I can't. I wanted to put this dress on and smile and pose and I was even excited at the idea of doing that, then I saw myself in the camera and it all went to poo. I hated every moment of taking these pictures and I hate that, you can see it in my face. It's kinda cool I guess, this intense stare with a thinly masked undertone of hatred, but that wasn't what I wanted. I have body dysmorphia which means when I look at myself I literally see something different from reality.... or so I am promised is the case. It's very hard to describe but I will try.

Imagine there's a table with a dead fish on it. Every-day you see this table with the dead fish, it is a dead fish on a table, you see it. However, when other people look on the table they say things like "Wow, what beautiful flowers!" or "Those flowers are so pretty", but all you see is a dead fish. You might think they're mad, but there are so many of them; in-fact literally everyone else comments about the flowers and no-one says they see a dead fish. You wonder if there's something strange about the fish, maybe it's a trick? You pick up and touch and inspect the fish but it is most defiantly 100% a dead fish in all ways.

At this point there's only two options: everyone in the world is playing a trick on you or you are insane. You don't feel insane, but the idea that the whole world is out to fool you is most certainly insane, so what the hell do you do? You have to pretend the fish is flowers, trust that everyone else is correct and that you are wrong and the fish is flowers but that is so wrong feeling all the time. Over time you start to get used to it, you even start to see flowers from time to time and it almost feels right... Then one-day you hear someone say "those flowers are kinda ugly" and that is it. Fish validated, everything you saw was true and everyone else is lying. You remember the fish and the fish is fishy-er than ever before, the glitch in the matrix is revealed and the flowers are fish and always were fish and everyone is out to get you.

I am the fish on the table.  

This is why it only takes one bad comment on how I look to destroy me, my brain wants its perceptions to be true and I perceive myself as hideously ugly. I am aware that I am probably not a long-nosed, crooked, lumpy, extremely obese, green skinned, boil covered, fish headed freak of nature with a terrible haircut but that is genuinely what I see when I look at myself. Being seen is hard for me but I hold on to the idea that if I make myself be seen then maybe it will get better over time, which it has kinda sometimes? I don't know if this is a good idea actually. It's very hard and I am very not well right now so I'm extra having a hard time looking at myself, which sucks because I WANT to be the flowers, I don't like being the fish. It's hard...