The way my room is set up every morning moring the first this I see is a mirror

The same mirror I sit in front of and cry when my face breaks out or shorts don't fit

The very same mirror I dance in front of when I have a good hair day

But how did my life become so centered around a mirror?

I was told to love my body from as long as I can remember

5 years old.. "She is so adorable! Boys will love her!"

8 years old.. "She has beautiful eyes"

I was spoon fed complaints from grownups like it was a vegetable that I had to eat to get my candy

I expected to hit puberty and grow into beautiful body that I would love

That's not what happened

Instead I was handed magazines with models who had my hair and eyes but not my thighs or height

The two-piece bathing suits I had worn as a child were taken away and replaced with the ones that covered the belly that I was so ashamed of even at ten years old

I was given back the right to wear a bikini at 15 because the years of body shaming where over

I was told I had a woman's body when I wasn't even a yet a teenager

The books I so desperately clung to where slowly falling from my hands because all I wanted was to be like the others girls

But they never left my side

My phone camera became my show point,

My selfie was my highlight

Boys telling me I was pretty but never telling me that my mind was radiant

But God I clung to the those complaints that I so desired

I wanted, I still want to be told I'm pretty

But what I want even more is told that my mind is lovely

I want someone to love the curves that I have trouble loving

But please love the way I get lost in a book

By all means love my eyes

Love them when I recite a story about some distant country I read about

My body, my mind I want to love them all

When I'm old and gray

My hair won't be pretty

My eyes wont light up as they do as a teenager

But my mind will still be my own

When I fall in

I want to love their personality and mind

I want him to do the same