The Displaced Image

I always like to give credit where credit is due. As a woman, I admire women who are beautiful inside and out. When I see a woman who is wearing something sassy, nice fragrance or speaking on something I value I compliment her. Out of curiosity, I often enquired as to where she obtained her gems as one might say. I am a strong believer in befriended women who have like-minded values. As the old saying goes, what you see is not always what you get. The image that we sometimes see in the mirror is not the one everyone else sees.  The Image is often times displaced.

She pulled up in a convertible with the top down.  I will never forget the song she was playing because it was one of my favorite songs by Tracey Chapman, entitled “All that you have is your soul.” She walked in the boutique wearing a gray shirt with slit sleeves. She had a pair of ripped jeans on. It brought out the shirt along with the gray sandals to match.  The baseball cap seemed appropriate since she was driving a convertible. I was standing outside when she pulled up and naturally complimented her on her car. She shyly smiled and said, “Thank You”. Then continued to say ‘the car was not worth the trouble of keeping since most people saw the image of the car and not the true image she displayed.’ I thought that to be an odd statement but none the less I respected it.

She asked me my name and I said, Cynthia. She raised her eyes and said “my mother’s name is Cynthia and I was *kind of* named after her. I only wish I looked like her as well. But beauty skipped me in my family tree.” Shocked and amazed by this statement coming from this beauty queen I responded by asking her name. “My name is Cyntoni. My father’s name is Tony, and as I said my mother’s name was Cynthia. Back when they both loved me they decided that each one would give me a piece of their name. But that decision was made before I was born and they had a chance to see me. I think if they had known I would carry this deformity they would have made a different choice. Back when my mother was carrying me they didn’t have the 3D ultrasounds so the image in their minds was actually a displaced image.”

Cyntoni stood 5 ft and 4 in tall. Pretty much an average height for a woman. Her skin was pastel and maybe she could use a tan but that definitely wasn’t considered a deformity. Her eyes were jade green with an exotic tone to them. I know women who would pay to have contacts that color. Her lips were drawn in a sultry design, which she accented with a deep burgundy color. Her eyebrows looked to be tatted on her face in just the right design to accent her exotic eyes. She had the face any man would love to wake up to. I wondered in my mind just what type of deformity she had that made her feel so deeply about her parents no longer wanted her. The image I saw of her was a beautiful one. Maybe the deformity lied underneath her clothes. Because the image displayed seemed perfect to me.

After a few minutes of chit chat, I started her a dressing room. As I was helping her pick out clothes she warned me that she didn’t want any dresses that showed her horrible scars on her neck. I was a little shocked because I didn’t notice anything on her neck. But, politely I agreed to try and find dresses with a high neck. A few moments later I heard a loud shriek come from the dressing room. Cyntoni was looking in the mirror sobbing loudly. She went on to tell me that over the past few years she had suffered from this horrible and grotesque scars on her neck she said her neck was so swollen she could barely stand to look at herself. She just could not stand the image displayed.

“How long have you had these scars?” I asked in a concerned voice. She told me the scars started on her face and that was the cause for all the bruising. Eventually, it moved down to her neck and at the rate the scars were developing she was afraid that her whole body would be covered in a year. I looked at this beautiful woman and just could not see one scar. She asked if she could use the restroom to wash her face and I said absolutely. As she sat her purse on the dressing room chair a bottle of pills fell out.

I looked on the bottle and it read ” Citalopram* (Celexa) take 40 mg twice a day for the treatment of body dysmorphic.” A mental disorder where a person sees deformities in the mirror that does not exist.

Many times in life we look at other people and we see a beautiful picture of them but, the image of our own life is displaced. The mind is such a powerful tool. Sometimes for good and sometimes for bad. The important thing in life is to remember that when we are looking at our self to make sure it is not a displaced Image.

Because what you see is what you get.