Sloped waist like a pair of parenthesis. Shoulders with the same width of hips, never mountainous. Stomach so flat it could balance a steel sphere, and long, infinite legs. A girl’s beauty is paramount and even as a twelve-year-old baby, I knew I would never be treated the same as those girls.

I let this disappointment in myself simmer for a few years. Then at the ripe age of fourteen or fifteen, I declared that this era of self-hatred would end. Always a problem-solver I began to seek the advice of online videos, countless articles that taught a girl to look like the girl society desired and by virtue, I desired. It was going to be over for everyone once I learned to contour my bulbous nose into a pin-sharp bullet. It was going to be over for everyone once the bleach on my skin washed me up, finally letting go of the dirt I’d been so fond of in my early childhood years. And just you wait until everyone can see the sparkle in my mud-brown eyes when I stitch them open, so I’m a mixed exotic spectacle and not a boring freak show. I was going to slice my portions in half because scars on a wrist wasn’t a suffering that could be hidden, but more importantly, it wasn’t going to make me pretty. I wanted to be pretty and I was going to be pretty.

Well, I had all the pain, none of the gain.

It was going to be over for me if I kept destroying my body, constantly chewing on my emotions and never the food on my plate. My brain was going to rot if my personal, impossible validation quota wasn’t met. My throat and eyes always dry because of how much I cried over things I couldn’t help about myself. 

Not skinny. Not fair. Not perfect.

Not to brag, but I’d make a pretty good spy. Nobody caught onto my suffering. Depressed but always best-dressed, lipsticks and glosses to glue a smile to my face.

I withered alone in my room. Nobody would want the freakish girl who tried to decay her flesh until only bones remained, I thought. You’re just a nobody. 

But I’ll admit, it’s hard to say if I had a “moment of clarity,” that changed my course, because I didn’t. At some point I was sick of feeling weak and defeated. Some days were easier to feign self-love, while some days were the dark shadows, consuming me once the light days had passed. It took a few years to realize, understand, the notion of “perfect” didn’t serve a purpose. It doesn’t exist. We simply exist and learn to build meaning around that. It’s a matter of what you want that definition is.

I’d hold my younger self in my arms if I could. You weren’t ugly, you were just a girl. You weren’t vain, you were sick and you needed help. You were more than what your brain scolded you for, more than the stupid, meaningless reflection on the mirror. You were failed by a society that raised you on praise and approval of your features, but you, yourself, are not a failure.

I still don’t know what I think of myself in a definitive, decisive answer. I’m not heaven’s greatest gift to walk the planet, but I’m certainly not hell’s monster unleashed either.

Even now, I want to be pretty. I yearn for those impossible standards. But I can find other means to chase first, such as high scores on quizzes and tests, to be the friend and older sister to anyone that needed it. Developing a sense of self-worth through words on a paper. I think I’ll head down this path and see where it leads me. It couldn’t get uglier than my past. Things can only look up from here.

Learning to appreciate what I am was an invaluable skill I learned. Everyone else can do it too. We are more than our trauma and hurt. We are deserving of smiles and happiness. We are worthy.