“Have you dreamt a better version of yourself?” croaked the deep voice from the eerie pop-up on my screen. Its airbrushed models stare back at me. Watching with those perfect, hollow eyes and a smile too wide to be real. A cold chill runs down my spine just staring back.

“Pop a few pills, and you’ll be picture perfect.”

I try to look away but the ad keeps on tempting me with promises of finally being able to accept yourself, of reaching the balance with just one injection of a substance.

Without a second thought, I ordered the said substance. A few weeks later, it arrived with the promise of finally unlocking the balance to your identity — your truest form.

A manual, paraphernalia, and finally, the serum, are laid out neatly; I feel afraid, scared of what possibly can happen. But the promise of a “better version” of myself keeps on echoing in my mind. Finally, I wouldn’t have to worry about society having a second look at me every time. I can finally live in the skin that I want to be; unjudged by the living and envied by the dead.

At first, my skin started to crawl. It felt like something was inside of me gnawing at every organ, begging to be released. A feeling I’ve known for so long, like how the words were in a lump inside of my throat the night I told my mother that I can’t be her daughter or son. Inside of me was something scratching its way out after being trapped in the wrong flesh for so long.

My eyes started to roll rapidly like how they do when you explain your pronouns, going in different directions like how my brain is when I keep on trying to figure out which do I conform to — the norms or your heart?

And then it happens.

The skin on my back is torn apart and excretes not just blood and bile pulsating as if it’s alive, but another layer of skin altogether.

I screamed as it continuously pushed out of the ripped seam of my body, my whole body convulsed. I screamed until I realized my voice echoed back in a different tone. In a different voice.

I saw them lying on the floor. Perfect. Just how I imagined it in my head, just how I envisioned myself to be — the perfect balance! This is how I idealized myself to be, this is how I’ve shaped my identity from my daydreams and dysphoric spirals. It’s surreal but at the same time felt insincere.

As I waited for them to open their eyes, I was met with a cold glare and a pitiful smile. It felt as if all of this beauty that I wanted was still the same; it still looks down on me even if it were mine.

“This is what you wanted, right?” they asked, almost as if they’re taunting me.

“The truest form of yourself, that only you can accept.”

Day by day, they became more me than I ever was, maybe more me than I can ever become myself. Became more confident. Started to go out. Looked at themselves without ever feeling an inch of disgust. It was basically plastered all over them that “I finally feel like myself” or for me, how I expected myself to feel because of the blueprint I drew from other people like me, that don’t look like me.

As it continued that way, they started to become greedier; my life was theirs now. I felt like I was going static, as if any moment now I’d be erased from the face of the Earth. With them taking over, there was nothing left for me.

My skin turned rotten, almost peeling off, but what hurts more is how I feel like the person inside of me wasn’t the same as this person who claims to be the “truest version of myself.” I’ve lost my identity in place of what I thought would make me feel like I belonged.

Is this the cost of balance? Of beauty? Of looking and feeling like the best version of yourself?

As much as I was confused before, I feel like it’s much more confusing now. It definitely feels as if someone else was living my life, but in fact, they were only a byproduct of dysphoria — a hollow box of standards that I tried so desperately to ram my body into, and here I am bleeding and ripped apart at the seams.

As I look up at this living, breathing creature who now lives my life… I can’t help but think of what I had to pay for my becoming, but the corpse of myself still breathes and it wants its life, its identity back.