Tights

You wake up in the morning and immediately pull your legs from the warm security of the covers to check for any new ones, and for the ones that may have bled during the night.

You steal your mother's dressing gown, because yours is too short to cover everything you don't want to show, before going down to cram coco pops in your face.

You rummage through your draws in the hope that there is a pair of full-length leggings in there, because your jeans are too short, it's too hot to wear tights and knee-length socks won't match what you want to wear. In the end, you go to the washing basket and dig out the pair you've worn for three days already.

You purposely hack holes in all flesh-coloured tights you own, because you have no occasion in the foreseeable future when you would ever want to wear them.

You run around school desperately at lunchtime, trying to find someone you like who can lend you a pair of tracksuit trousers for whatever sport you have next lesson because you lent yours to someone else and never got them back. You're lucky to find a pair that someone will let you borrow, let alone fit you properly.

You're careful not to pull your tights down any further than your knees when using the toilet, because you're both scared of what you might see and because you don't want to be tempted into making them any worse.

You see everyone back at school with beautiful tans after the summer holidays, while the only place that went brown on you was your feet, because you had everything covered up.

You pile clothes high on the boxes underneath your mirror, high enough so that you can hide everything you don't want to see.

Every time you look at yourself, all you can think is:

You did this to yourself.

It's all your fault.

All this mutilation, all this damage.

You did this to yourself.

You are ashamed of what you see.

You are ashamed of what you are.