Member-only story
I’ve Been Ugly for Five Days
but I’ll stop
A thousand imperfections. A thousand, if we’re being kind. If we truly start counting them, there would be no end in sight.
My eyes, my skin, my hair, my fingers, my hands, my arms, my posture, my nose, my eyebrows, my shoulders, my legs: on any given day, something is off.
I look in the mirror and see things to fix. And they can never be fixed all at once. I fix one, two, three, and just accept the rest. And by “accept,” I don’t mean with any semblance of self-love. I mean, I accept that I am ugly today.
Tomorrow, I am ugly again.
Does it matter why?
It doesn’t matter if I meet conventional beauty standards or not. It doesn’t matter what made me this way: a critical parent, society, a man, or all of these. It doesn’t matter if nothing is wrong with me at all. It doesn’t matter that most women feel this way to varying degrees.
The only thing that matters is the voice in my head.
The love of a man
I’ve had three relationships. Only in the current one do I feel, and know, that in his eyes I am always beautiful. Sometimes I shrink into myself, sometimes I despise myself, sometimes I feel okay and even phenomenal.
