Now Playing: Believe Again by Delta Goodrem (I lost my faith in love, tonight I believe again.)
If you've told me that I'm beautiful, I didn't believe you.
I'm sorry, but I can't.
Most people don't know this, but when I'm not around people I'm very quiet. I keep to myself, in my own world. And I am plagued, tormented, by insecurities. We all are.
It's a product of being me, seriously. I was bullied a lot when I was little. I never felt like I was good enough compared to all the rich white girls destined for poshy private schools, I could never compete with them for any boys I liked. I was short, and Asian, bookish but very loud at the same time. I think boys back then were a mixture of intimidated and disgusted by me; they looked up to me and pushed me down all at once, and it was pretty damn confusing. I never felt pretty, growing up. And then I went on a downward spiral: I got chicken pox for the first time at the ripe old age of eleven, and I still have loads of scars,and then hormones kicked in and I had horrible acne, and stretch marks, and then on top of that I started piling on weight...
I knew I was smart. I knew I was destined to be a scholarship girl, or else just one of the many Asians in one of the many overcrowded public schools. It seemed to me to be a pretty bleak future, especially when hormones kicked in. I never wanted attention so badly; I wanted to be admired, adored, I wanted to be able to pick and choose like all the other girls. It was shallow, I know. But I was so very young, and so very insecure and unsure of myself.
I've always liked to think of myself as substance over style, but to be perfectly honest, I don't know many people who are with me on this. And I'm not the kind of person who could say, in a blase way, that they would be attracted to a troll if he had a nice heart; because I wouldn't be, I know myself too well. I hope this post doesn't sound ridiculously petty, or that it comes across that my mental state is entirely based on how people perceive me, but I've always been an aesthetic, sensory kind of person, and I'm not afraid of physical attraction even if everyone else seems to be. This sounds ridiculous now that I think about it, but I remember, being thirteen, being let down by a friend; a boy I loved beyond reason. I let him get away with anything, I let pretty much anything slide, because I thought I wasn't good enough. And my looks...was a large part of that.
Not many people have said to my face that I am pretty - I'm not that cocky! (or that popular...but that's another story) But when they do, I feel like they're being mean. Insincere. Don't say it if you don't mean it, you know? It never occurred to me that anyone could mean it, not after all the horrible things so many people have said to me. I never for a second believed it. Even now, I don't really know if anyone thinks of me as pretty. It is much easier for me to think that people find me, I don't know, nice. Funny. Smart. Engaging. I could live without beauty if people thought all of that about me.
This year has been weird. I'm still trying to kid myself into believing that I am 'happily' single, when I'm not; it's that last, unticked box on my wishlist that has never ceased to cause me pain. But I've changed, physically, at least - I'm not an awkward little girl anymore, or a dumpy depressed pre-teen. It is bewildering to be considered attractive by people you've always thought of as being inhumanly beautiful; disorienting, confusing, at times heartbreaking but, dare I say it? Supremely flattering. For the first time I have some kind of solid proof that I can have an effect on people without brandishing a report card. And...I'm starting to believe it. A little. For the first time I can look at myself in the mirror and say 'You know what? You look okay.'
And that's one of the many things that's made me okay with it all. For a long time I felt like it was never coming; that I would never get my teenage dream unless I really scraped the bottom of the barrel. Which is a pretty silly thought, considering that I am sixteen, after all, and I'm not deformed and I do know how to dress to impress and there is, I hope, so much more to me than the transitory posession of physical beauty, but when I had depression I would dwell on it endlessly. I was losing self-respect, fast. But now...I'll get there.
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