Ugly Duckling
I'm feeling like an ugly duckling these days. Sloppy, pudgy, unattractive, almost invisible. Sadly, with very few exceptions, I have felt like an ugly duckling for the vast majority of my life. I've mentioned this before, but as a child, I was a very ugly duckling, especially after my mother died and I had no female presence to help me look nice. My clothes were wrinkled and didn't fit well, I had acne, my hair was long and tangled and scraggly and often dirty, and I was chubby so I just looked swollen.
As a pre-teen and in my early teens, I was recovering from a bad perm and bad clothing choices. Most jeans came at least slightly tapered, which is just an abomination, but I wore them anyway. I thought I was being trendy by dressing grungy - denim cut offs, torn jeans, guy-cut t-shirts, flannel shirts, etc - but in retrospect, I just looked kind of ugly & butch. Even then I wished that there was a way for me to look beautiful and romantic and pretty, but it just seemed so impossible. I was fat, I was nerdy, I had glasses with gigantic round lenses, there was just no hope.
At some point, around the ages of 15-16, I was exercising regularly, eating fairly healthfully (I was mostly a vegetarian and had very specific eating habits), and I dropped some weight. I was wearing makeup, buying clothes that reflected for the most part how I wanted to look, and on some level I had turned from the ugly duckling to the swan I wanted to be. But it was short lived, because I didn't know how to be pretty, how to continue taking care of myself, how to deal with any sort of actual attention. I had been afraid of people except my known & trusted friends, and have always been afraid of people since elementary school. My elementary school classmates (and teachers) were downright abusive in how they treated me, and basically I left my Catholic elementary school with the firm understanding that I was a bad child, a disorganized child, an underachiever, a dork, a fat girl, an ugly girl, a pig, a loser.
During college I think I wavered between feeling like a very ugly duckling indeed and a swan, but probably mostly an ugly duckling. College, on some level, felt a lot like elementary school in terms of feeling left out, alone, disliked, etc. I think I was the only girl ever to be rejected from both sororities at my school (our college was 80% male, and I had desperately wanted to pledge a sorority to make some girlfriends). I felt left behind in so many ways, and often felt completely invisible. My junior & senior years I developed some sense of self esteem again, but not enough to lift me out of my rut of being an ugly ducky.
So here I am. I'm an ugly duckling once more, and I hate it. I've made committments to myself before, that I will always wear makeup to work, that I will replace my sloppy wardrobe with things Stacy & Clinton would approve of, that I will work hard to get to a weight where I can look good in clothes...and I've never stuck with them.
Part of it is that I don't think I really believe that there is a swan under all of this. That I am ugly not just outside but inside as well. That I am a weak, pathetic person, self-absorbed and gluttonous, and that I can never become beautiful because I don't deserve to be beautiful. And that it just shows how horrible I am that I so desperately wish that I was.
I know that sounds really and truly screwed up...it really is. And I'm starting to realize that there have been influences in my life that made me feel this way about myself, and that it's not my fault that I was sloppy & bedraggled as a child, and that I have to teach myself to take care of myself the way a parent would teach a child to take care of themselves, because no one really taught me.
And it's not evil to want to be a beautiful swan. It's not my only goal in life. And I do not just mean that I want to look good. I want to be a better person. I want to accomplish more things, learn more things, do things to make the world better. I want to live outside of my head for a change. Be a part of the world instead of what feels like an invisible observer.
As a pre-teen and in my early teens, I was recovering from a bad perm and bad clothing choices. Most jeans came at least slightly tapered, which is just an abomination, but I wore them anyway. I thought I was being trendy by dressing grungy - denim cut offs, torn jeans, guy-cut t-shirts, flannel shirts, etc - but in retrospect, I just looked kind of ugly & butch. Even then I wished that there was a way for me to look beautiful and romantic and pretty, but it just seemed so impossible. I was fat, I was nerdy, I had glasses with gigantic round lenses, there was just no hope.
At some point, around the ages of 15-16, I was exercising regularly, eating fairly healthfully (I was mostly a vegetarian and had very specific eating habits), and I dropped some weight. I was wearing makeup, buying clothes that reflected for the most part how I wanted to look, and on some level I had turned from the ugly duckling to the swan I wanted to be. But it was short lived, because I didn't know how to be pretty, how to continue taking care of myself, how to deal with any sort of actual attention. I had been afraid of people except my known & trusted friends, and have always been afraid of people since elementary school. My elementary school classmates (and teachers) were downright abusive in how they treated me, and basically I left my Catholic elementary school with the firm understanding that I was a bad child, a disorganized child, an underachiever, a dork, a fat girl, an ugly girl, a pig, a loser.
During college I think I wavered between feeling like a very ugly duckling indeed and a swan, but probably mostly an ugly duckling. College, on some level, felt a lot like elementary school in terms of feeling left out, alone, disliked, etc. I think I was the only girl ever to be rejected from both sororities at my school (our college was 80% male, and I had desperately wanted to pledge a sorority to make some girlfriends). I felt left behind in so many ways, and often felt completely invisible. My junior & senior years I developed some sense of self esteem again, but not enough to lift me out of my rut of being an ugly ducky.
So here I am. I'm an ugly duckling once more, and I hate it. I've made committments to myself before, that I will always wear makeup to work, that I will replace my sloppy wardrobe with things Stacy & Clinton would approve of, that I will work hard to get to a weight where I can look good in clothes...and I've never stuck with them.
Part of it is that I don't think I really believe that there is a swan under all of this. That I am ugly not just outside but inside as well. That I am a weak, pathetic person, self-absorbed and gluttonous, and that I can never become beautiful because I don't deserve to be beautiful. And that it just shows how horrible I am that I so desperately wish that I was.
I know that sounds really and truly screwed up...it really is. And I'm starting to realize that there have been influences in my life that made me feel this way about myself, and that it's not my fault that I was sloppy & bedraggled as a child, and that I have to teach myself to take care of myself the way a parent would teach a child to take care of themselves, because no one really taught me.
And it's not evil to want to be a beautiful swan. It's not my only goal in life. And I do not just mean that I want to look good. I want to be a better person. I want to accomplish more things, learn more things, do things to make the world better. I want to live outside of my head for a change. Be a part of the world instead of what feels like an invisible observer.
1 Comments:
You're a swan, inside and out. You're worth all of this. People can be reborn at any point, you don't have to drag a lonely little girl around inside you for the rest of your life. You are not only your past, you are also your future and your present.
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