Why you’re ugly? Easy. It’s the way your skin folds when you sit, like it forgot it was supposed to stay smooth forever. It’s how your eyes aren’t symmetrical enough, one squinting like it’s tired of looking at you. It’s the gap in your teeth, the awkward laugh you let slip when you’re nervous, the way your voice cracks when you try to sound confident. Ugly, right? Obviously. Just look at yourself– no really– look.
You may read this, and you may get offended. And that’s funny, isn’t it? Because if you really thought that way about yourself, you wouldn’t be so quick to flinch. You wouldn’t be so angry. You’d sit there, and nod along, would you not? Because the truth isn’t hard to swallow when you’ve already consumed it.
But you haven’t. And that’s the catch, isn’t it? You don’t hate yourself as much as you think you do. You’re just trying to convince yourself it’s true because it feels safer that way– because it’s easier to be mean to yourself so you don’t get hurt when other people are. But that doesn’t protect you from enemies, it creates one; you.
You are ugly. You’re ugly because you learned to call a mirror a judge instead of a reflection. You stare everyday at the generations of love on your face– the curve of your nose borrowed from a grandmother you’ve never met, her laughter lives on through the way your eyes crinkle when you smile. The fullness of your cheeks, a gift from your mother that others in her day would bask in, the same cheek bones you choose to hate, others save thousands to afford.
The freckles and moles, built in constellations scattered across skin, or–sunlit dapples on a forest floor. Each line, each shadow, each freckle, holds the weight of someone else’s story, someone else’s love, someone else’s life, and yet you stare, not in awe but in disdain, mistaking inheritance for imperfection as if their love could ever be “ugly”. As if it could ever be wrong.
The mirror isn’t cruel; it’s generous. It holds the history of hands that held you, of voices that sang to you, of hearts that loved you into existence. Everytime you call yourself unworthy, you deny their legacy. You stare at the generations of love on your face and don’t recognize it–but oh, how they would, if they were here. They’d see themselves in you. They’d call you beautiful.
You are ugly, yes. But only in the way wildflowers are weeds to those who don’t understand them.
Author’s Note:
You are only perceived through how you view yourself. Your self-concept is the only thing that should matter, I like to believe the body you’re born with was your souls idea of beauty. Why spend so much time degrading the only face in the world that looks like yours?
Dorabell Doll | 14 | Sunrise, FL | @officialdorabelldoll on Instagram
