Navel Gazing

Beauty and self-love are such strange concepts. I will shamefully admit that I think about both a great deal. I shouldn't, but that's another issue.

I had pretty terrible self-esteem growing up. I always knew I was smarter, but it's not like that matters when you're seven, and more than anything, it makes you a social outcast. I was a pretty adorable preschooler but I had a bowl cut, was boyish, precocious, and probably annoying as hell. When we would role-play power rangers, I had to be the yellow one (second tier, for a girl) or, worse, the monster. The girl who got to be pink had french braids and hair ribbons, neither of which my blonde bob was conducive to, and neither of which my mother could handle. Meanwhile, the older kids in the neighborhood (2-3 years ahead, and there were four or five of them) would make fun of me, harass me, hide my shoes on top of the playground equipment where I couldn't get at them, and all sorts of other things.

Once, when I was about five, we were playing on my neighbor's swingset, and the worst one, an older boy who was sitting in a tree, threw the wooden handle of an ax at my head as I swung back and forth. My father saw him from our kitchen window. He sprinted over, grabbed the boy out of the tree, and shook him violently, yelling.

That kid is the only person I really hold any kind of grudge against. He has a rat face now, so I guess karma got him in the end.

Parts of elementary school were just as bad. I was still somewhat socially awkward (I feel horrible saying it was because I was smarter than the other kids, but really, that did make it harder to relate), and worse yet, physically awkward before everyone else was. I was 5'4" by the time I was in fifth or sixth grade, and going through all of those beautiful bodily changes that everyone else had yet to experience. I was the odd one out, always.

I guess things were better in high school, aside from a really terrible bout of manic depression (everyone goes through rough spots in adolescence, but I had paranoid delusions, lost ten pounds in two months, slept about two hours a night, and actually thought I was going to die), but I guess what this all is supposed to explain is my terrible self-esteem. I grew up thinking I was absolutely hideous. My first assumption was that people probably didn't like me. I assumed they wouldn't even remember who I was. When I was eleven I practically tweezed my eyebrows off because I hated them and hated my face and wanted so badly to conform to the standard of beauty that I saw reflected everywhere, because I wanted to be a pretty girl. The end result was way worse. Sophomore year, someone told me that they thought they were in love with me and thought I was beautiful, and my honest response was: "is this a joke?" I didn't think he could entertain thoughts like that and actually be sane.

That insecurity never seems to go away, no matter how hard I try. I still feel like a fat and awkward eleven-year-old on the inside. I don't want to feel that way; it goes against everything I believe in, and yet I can't shake it. Some days are better than others. I am confident as long as I don't think too hard about it.

The funny thing that I have realized over time is that it truly does not matter what other people tell you. When you have low self-esteem you crave the affirmation of others; you want people to tell you that you are wonderful and pretty and everything else, even though you feel guilty about wanting it. Then, when someone does tell you any of those, it's hollow. Yet you still crave it. I have a boyfriend who tells me I'm beautiful all of the time, and I know he's not lying to me, but I'll never fully believe him or internalize it, no matter how much I want to, at least not any time soon.

Why is it so goddamn hard to be comfortable with yourself? I am on an intrinsic level; I just don't like the superficial part. I hate that. I think the worst aspect is that I know I shouldn't care, but I do. The contradiction makes me feel worse than poor body image ever could.