I've Never Hated The Way I Look More Than I Do Now

I've never liked the way I look.

I just didn't look like the other girls at school. I didn't have dimples like they did, I didn't have eyelashes that caught the sunlight, I didn't have a smile worth being seen. I still don't. They had mighty confidence, grace, radiance. I had a mighty forehead. I still do.

It wasn't so much an issue, but my appearance was never something I was proud of. Sure, I wore what I wanted to wear, I didn't care about make-up (other than my excessive quantity of eyeliner, thick enough that Noah could have just laid it down as carpeting and saved himself an Ark job), I wasn't bothered about my weight (then)  -  but I just knew my features weren't shaped like everybody else's. And it bothered me.

Then I got a boyfriend. And then I gained two stone. And then, for the next five years, I stopped acknowledging how I looked. I didn't stop caring, I just buried that dislike for myself beneath sixteen pizza boxes and nine bowls of pesto pasta and tried not to think about it. I'd found somebody that, against all odds, could withstand how I looked and I worried that if I focused too much on that unlikelihood, then the universe would stride through the door, delivering a tray of bolognese and chips in exchange for taking him away an correcting it. So instead, I just carried on existing.

But I didn't want to merely exist. I wanted to live.

And to live is to notice the beauty in each moment of life  -  including in yourself.

In 2018, me and my boyfriend broke up. I lost three stone. I looked better than I ever had done before, or that's what I was supposed to think, right?

For the first time in my life I started to get attention. Nothing strictly palpable, not at first, but I noticed that people looked at me more. And then people began telling me "you look so pretty!" and "wow, how slim are you?" and boys acknowledged me, they approached me, they didn't gag and leg it far far away. I don't mean to make this sound like a brag because, in a twisted way, this recognition sometimes made me nervous. I began to feel like the very moment I wiped my eyeliner off or went up for round five at Buffet Island then suddenly I wouldn't be worth seeing anymore. But still, I received these compliments and quite often it felt nice. It felt different. It felt new.

And yet, despite all this, I didn't believe a single word of it.

Then I met a boy.

Towards the back end of 2019, I met a boy who told me I was gorgeous.

He took me on my first ever proper date. He said he wanted to do this right, have a real first date, somewhere fancy. So I told him if we were going to do it right, we were going to do it right. I told him about my favourite place in my city, about this fairy-light layered bridge over the canal, not far from the restaurant he'd booked. I told him I'd meet him there, beneath the moonlight, just the two of us on the bridge. Life is about romanticising, right?

"When you were stood there," he said to me, once we were seated at our table, "I was just looking at you and thinking wow, I can't believe I'm with her."

That's what he said to me, with such conviction and such certainty but I still couldn't be sure that my mom hasn't bribed him to say that. It was the kindest, sweetest thing and the first thing that sprang into my head was: he's lying. I couldn't even look him in the eye. I never could. At one point he had to take my face in his hands just so I'd look at him. But eye contact just served as a stark reminder that this lovely boy was being subjected with the conscious task of having to look at me. I hated the idea that he could see my face in full view. I hated that I was putting him through that.

How heartbreaking is that?

But I couldn't help it. I hated hated hated my own face, but there was very little I could do about that. However, with every pound that I lost and with each loving gesture and heartfelt compliment that I received, it conditioned me into believing that it was clearly my body size that made up for the sheer horror of looking directly at me. If I was thinner, that at least reduced the surface area for all my unsightliness to lie on.

So I began to believe that my weight defined my worth.

It's been over a year now. That boy is no longer around (don't worry I didn't kill him. Not in real life, anyway. On Sims 3, however). And to this day, I still pin my value to my thigh size. The thicker they are, the less I'd sell for on eBay.

I hate that I do that, but I don't know how to undo that.

I developed an eating disorder this year. During recovery, I put on weight. I knew that was an inevitable and valuable part of the process, I just didn't know how much it would upset me. I hated my face at the best of times, but in conjunction with my expanding stomach and my disappearing collarbones  -  I felt like Mama Nature had lobbed this apocalypse our way to hurry people indoors so they wouldn't have to encounter me.

Which would have worked superbly were we in the 1864. They didn't have Zoom back then  -  just gloom. A little doom. Possibly a wooden broom. But this was 2020, seeping into 2021, and here I am sat in the same bat onesie as back in March ("Same pants?" somebody shouts from the back. "No comment," I mutter), with the same face and the same inherent hatred.

The same aversion to my own face. I've become so allergic to the way I look that it genuinely deters me from Zooming with people. It fills me with this unbridled fear of showcasing my real face  -  that matches up in no way to the photos of me online  -  to those who only know me from my digital presence. It's what has always prevented me from wanting to use dating apps (that and the fact that I'd have to sign my soul over to Satan beforehand. Shame I sold it to Subway sandwiches long, long ago). It's what stops me from looking anybody in the eye, ever.

Even when I pass strangers on the pavement  -  though my favourite thing in the world is to grin directly at them, I cannot look in their eyes whilst I do so, for fear I'll see my stupid face reflected back at me. That's certainly nothing worth smiling about.

And then I met another boy.

Well, kind of. I met him online  -  there's a pandemic on, remember.

It was an unintentional encounter. I stumbled upon a collection of words attached to a conscious soul who is an extension of all the greatest things in this universe. He's not like anybody else I've ever known. And suddenly; I've never hated the way I look more.

Because now the way I look means something. It comes weighted by this intense pressure to look Good Enough™ to keep this boy around. What if one day he sees my face? My real face, not my online face, not the face that I've slowly conditioned myself to get used to via excessive uploading online as a way of desperately trying to convince myself to accept what I look like. Problem is, I look nothing like the pictures I take of myself. So I don't even know which version of me I actually resemble in order to get used to her.

Which means, the me this boy is seeing is barely me at all. She's an abstract potential belonging to the girl on the other side of the mirror who wears the same galaxy - print flare trousers that I do  -  but she wears them better. And now all I can think is that it is no longer a thought but a scientific fact that my face will be nothing but a severe disappointment, an anti-climax, a promise not kept. And then he'll leave.

I've never been this conscious of my own appearance  -  and I've never hated it more.

But this isn't me pining for reassurance or attention of sympathy. This is me, laying down a new path.

This is me showing you exactly how easy it is to be down on yourself. How common it is, how encompassing, because I've just spent the last half an hour crying to my mom about how this, right now, right here, today, is the most I've ever hated the way I look. And she said she feels the same (about herself, not about me. Though she does gag whenever I walk into a room?). Loads of people feel the same. As human beings, we all come equipped with Self-Hating Software that, much like MS Paint, is somehow still a big part of us.

I'd venture to say that everybody at some point in their lifetime has hated the way they look. Has felt like the antithesis of pretty, as though they stand out like a bogey in a bolognese. Everybody has felt ugly. And if you are one of them, if you are experiencing this, struggling with this idea right now, just know that you are not alone in this. And you are not ugly. Not just because beauty is subjective, but because beauty is exactly what you tell it to be.

Which is why I am telling myself I am beautiful, over and over, until I believe it. Maybe I'll never believe it, but if nothing else then I am at least teaching myself how to accept the theory that maybe, just maybe, to somebody, I might be. But above all else, I want to be beautiful to me.

So here I am  -  not trying to change myself for anyone or anything. Not buying new clothes to fit somebody else's style. Not altering my weight to fit into somebody else's arms. Not shying away from people from fear that I don't fit their definition of pretty. I am not changing myself. I am simply changing my mindset, reminding myself that I am beautiful if I want to be. And I want to be.

And I am.

But do you know what I am more so? Invaluable.

Much like you. Much like all of us. Not based on our looks or our athleticism or the composition of freckles along our nose  -  but based on the value we infuse into all that we do. Based on our actions and our passions. On our kindness and our drive. On that watercolour painting of Saturn you made for your nephew. On your donation to the local ballet centre, so that your neighbour's daughter can finally join. On those hours you sat comforting your gran after the gazelle got eaten on Blue Planet II. On the smiles you gift at any passerby, no matter how much you might dislike it.

Because beauty is not the glow of your cheekbones  -  it's the glow of your soul. That's how you stay eternally beautiful.

Still, I know in this day and age it's not that easy to disregard our attachment to aesthetics. Life can be superficial. I know we all pay it a little too much attention sometimes, even if subconsciously. So I know how badly it can sting if you feel like you lie outside of it's typical definition. Which is why I'm here, desperately trying to redefine it.

Because you are beautiful.

And so am I.

We'll get there.