Unconvincing Beauty

I’d grown up with people telling me how beautiful I was, telling me I should appreciate my ojibwe bone structure, my lightly tanned skin, my long, dark and thick hair. As if appreciating it more would make me see it myself, but it never did. Where they saw a lovely bone structure, I saw a flat and lumpy side profile and a chin that went straight to my neck. Where they saw olive tanned skin, I saw pimples, scars, and when I was extremely stressed, patches of dry skin that would get raised and red with irritation. The hair they saw was hours of effort washing, blow drying, straightened, with expensive products laced in that I wasn’t even sure were working the way they were supposed to. My natural hair was frizzy and unmanageable, wavy but not enough to influence natural curls, the volume was all tangles and fuzz. I’d tried, my whole life, to find something, just one thing I could like about myself without messing with it first, but there was nothing.

Looking back at all the teary eyed late nights of staring into the mirror and wishing I was someone else, I realize now that they were my most beautiful days, even in all my awkward phases, and even when I was trembling with anxiety. I still managed to be a unique kind of beautiful, the kind you couldn’t help but stare at. I just wish I could’ve been convinced.