John Paul Brammer

Is Canada’s national inquiry into thousands of missing aboriginal women too little, too late?

The little patch of skin, so unimportant just moments before, was suddenly the center of my universe. I went rummaging through my past trying to find my first memory of it, the first time I knew it was there.

My condition has a name: Body dysmorphic disorder. It means obsessive preoccupation with a perceived defect in physical appearance. But I didn’t learn that until later. When I locked myself in my apartment for three consecutive days, it had no name.