As Cruel As School Children

A couple of weeks back, this woman says to me, “You’re ugly.” And being 25 and way past the awkward teens, you’d think I had a witty comeback and I shrugged it off – I didn’t. I was so hurt. I was embarrassed about being so hurt about it. So, I suppressed it and carried on with life. But it wasn’t gone. I haven’t taken a picture since then.

I really hate my feet. The genes from my maternal side are probably laced with Big Foot’s. I wear a size 7 and as if that’s not enough, I have webbed toes. When I was little uncle Valamasango would call me, “one-centimetre-apart.” It was funny then but nowadays not so much. I never wear open shoes, EVER.

My father’s genes decided to kick in with bad teeth. They are white, don’t get it wrong but still they are apart. In high school my teacher did the worst thing, “Turn to your neighbour and pick out their outstanding feature,” and a girl I don’t talk to anymore brought unnecessary attention to my teeth. So I don’t take pictures smiling. I’m so self conscious about it that it ruins a lot of pictures.

Finally, decided to talk to my friends about the ‘ugly’ comment and honestly up to today I don’t understand why it got to me so much but it did. Worse cause she ain’t nothing to write home about herself.

I’ve decided to change my perspective. See the beauty in all my flaws. At the end of the day, I’m grateful that I have feet. Not everybody does. And these toes are like my second hands, I can reach for anything, usually the remote. And the beauty of gapped teeth is that there’s a minimal need for floss. Food doesn’t get caught in my teeth. It never happens.

You can’t control what people will say about you, but you can control your reaction to it. Yes, it may change you, but it doesn’t have to be an adverse change. And to the girl that called me ugly, “If the benchmark for pretty is you……” #ByeFelicia