A demon resurfaces

I'm just going to let you know up front, this post, it's not going to be pretty. It's something I've been holding onto for a long long time. It's NOT PRETTY, which makes me sad, and also completely and totally vulnerable.

I was driving home last night after meeting a friend for a quick round of evening golf followed by dinner and beers. It was, by many accounts, a perfect Seattle summer night. I was driving through the city with the windows down, a nice breeze drifting through my car. I pulled up to a stop light next to a car full of drunk 20-somethings who also had their window down. An obnoxious blond in the back pointed my direction and yelled up to the driver, "Pretty girl, pretty girl!" I can only assume she was on the lookout for finding someone for the driver, the sole guy in the car. All four passengers snapped their heads in my direction, when the same obnoxious girl backtracked saying, "Oh, wait. She's NOT PRETTY."

She was drunk, and, let's face it, a bitch. And it upsets me to great lengths that I even consider the next thought, but I think she's right.

Before you go all frantic to knock some sense into me, know that this is not a thinly veiled post, begging you fill the comment section up with messages about how stupid she is, and that I'm beautiful, blah, blah, blah. I mean that's nice of you to think that and/or even tell me, but I'm not fishing for that here. I've spent the past 18 years of my life believing I was NOT PRETTY, any comment, although appreciated is not going to "cure" me. If I'm ever going to believe it, it's going to come from deep within me (where I really hope it lives). This is something that I think about a lot, my own private monster eating me up on the inside daily. There's something about opening it up and sharing it out loud that makes me hope I can start to conquer it. And there's also something about opening it up and sharing it out loud that makes me feel completely exposed with a fragile childlike vulnerability.

Seventh grade. Two words that immediately conjure up images of awkwardness. Oh, and I fit the bill too--braces, glasses, gangly limbs, a spiral perm... uh-huh, a spiral perm with bangs! But I was in good company, as 99% of the population was equally awkward in their own way. It's quite likely that you are a part of that 99% too. But what about that other one percent? Somehow they lucked out in the adolescent lottery and never went through that awkward stage, moving straight from elementary school cute into outwardly flawless young adult--perfect skin, perfect hair, damn them.

In my school, the prototypical one percenter was named Feather. Yes, Feather. That's not to say she was perfect, she had her own monsters and insecurities, I'm sure, but as far as being pretty, solely based on appearance and completely divorced from the idea of holistic beauty, she was it.

There I was, not Feather, at school, walking down the hall with a group of girlfriends who were also not Feather, when we were stopped by an eighth grade boy. Were I to judge a book by its cover, I'd say this guy was a fellow memeber of the illustrious 99% club, except he had what I consider the awkward trifecta. On top of the baseline level of awkward, he had red hair and freckles--no good can come of that when you are a pubescent boy, it's a recipe for obnoxious.

So, Mr. Obnoxious, someone that none of us knew or had ever interacted with before, stops us. Pointing his pudgy freckly hand in my direction, he asked me, "Are you a model?" Flattered that he would think that (spiral perm with bangs, people!), I blushed and responded with a puzzled, "No." And without skipping a beat he exclaimed, "THANK GOD!"

Stunned, I exclaimed something I won't write here (in case you're reading, Grandma), and pretended to brush it off like it had no impact. But nearly 20 years later, I still feel the impact. Every day. There is no doubt in my mind that guy has no recollection of that incident, or if he does, he has no clue the reverberations it had on that little seventh grade girl's identity. Sometimes I wonder if I hadn't been walking down that hall, that day, at that moment and had not encountered that guy, would I have grown up believing myself to be pretty?

I believe myself to be a lot of things, athletic, intelligent, hard-working, funny, sincere, honest, loyal, talented, and now maker of kitchens, but pretty has never graced that list. Ever. I know this logic is completely flawed, but the reason I think I'm single is because I'm ugly. Because pretty girls are in relationships. And trust me, in my head I know that line of thought is completely ridiculous, but I just wish I could get my heart to believe it.

In fact, why I really think I'm single and not attracting people, is the fact that I can't see that I'm beautiful. Because if I don't believe it deep down inside and exude that confidence, how can anyone else appreciate it? Part of the problem is I'm looking for some sort of external validation that I am pretty, or at least not repulsive. Pretty enough that I don't have absolute strangers telling me to my face that I'm NOT PRETTY.

Wow. I just shined a giant tractor beam on my innermost gremlin. There you have it, Internets. I haven't ever opened myself up like this to anyone, lucky you. Gaping hole for all to see. It's now the elephant in my blog that I can't ignore. Wiping my tears away, I'm resolving to dive deep, tame that monster and love myself. Bear with me, there is a lot of ugly that I have to wade through and undo.