So I'm beautiful.. Now what?

I think I first became aware of the concept of beauty when I was in kindergarten. I don’t remember much from that period except for how they managed to make awful tasting chocolate puddings and what a difficult time I had trying to take afternoon naps (I don’t seem to have an issue with it now) but I remember that I thought “maybe it was because I wasn’t beautiful enough” when other girls ostracized me every now and then. I know I was an adorable little girl when I was six, but somehow I thought that if other girls didn’t want to play with me, then it must have been because of how I look, either my face or the way I dress. So the paradigm moved into my brain and made itself feel at home as I spent the rest of my life –until now that is– feeding and reinforcing the thought that made me lose faith in myself, sometimes even loathe myself to the point that I caused myself strong physical and psychological damage. Until it got too much… Then I realized that there is nothing wrong with me – it’s just that I’m doing something wrong. I had to take responsibility for “everything that’s happened to me” and learn different coping methods as painful as it may be.

Not being able to see beyond labels… this is what most of us get stuck spending our entire lives with. Your appearance, your lover, your car, your house, your clothing, your body, your job, your bank account, your family, your lover’s family, your lover’s car… the list never ends.

Loving yourself is not an easy task. So many people have issues with it because they get stuck on labels. I mean, if Audrey Hepburn thought that she was not beautiful enough back in the days, what does this say about a girl like me? This used to be a rhetorical question. Now it has an answer, which is, not much because what other people think of themselves should not be my criteria for what I should think of myself. If you keep disliking yourself, if you keep thinking that you’re ugly / worthless / uninteresting or whatever it is you are thinking, then eventually you will become that ugly person you think you are. You show the way you think you look. If you think that you’re ugly then people will be able to tell that from the way you act it out.

This week, for the first time since I was six, I looked at the mirror in the morning and I just told myself “damn, you’re hot”. What I saw was beautiful. I thought that the feeling would go away the next day, or the next second as it frequently does, but this time it didn’t. When I looked at the mirror the next day I felt the same, and day after as well. It just keeps on going. I would never imagine the day that I would tell myself something like that. It feels so much better when you hear it from yourself instead of from other people. That is what you really need, to hear it from yourself instead of from other people.

Now, I realize that I may not be six but I still embody that adorable little girl. I still have those ugly and sometimes even FUGLYYY mmpfghhh!#? moments. The difference is that they are much weaker now; I don’t let those thoughts become my identity because I managed to put my belief in myself before my environment’s (a.k.a. society) fabricated perfectionist standards.

The life goes on... I’ve always wanted to be beautiful. Now that I am beautiful, it keeps getting harder to figure out what I really want from my life.