I'm not so great at getting what is in my head onto paper, but I try! So, sorry if this doesn't make as much sense as it should.
It's all in your head. Confidence that is. What's the difference between girls who wear tight clothes and bikinis? You may say weight or attractiveness.....but I'm thinking you'd be wrong-the main difference is confidence. There are tiny girls covering up and curvy ones rocking itsy bitsy bikinis, some people have enough confidence to say 'I deserve to be here' and it goes from wearing a tight dress or enrolling in a high ranking school or trying out for a sporting team-and that attitude goes a long way. Of course there are pretty girls who know it and take full advantage of it as well, perfectly made-up, hair tousled artfully posed on a beach showing off their pretty tans and perfect bodies, taking instergram photos in the car on the way to work, tagging themselves in facebook pics, happily mugging in holiday snaps and posing in family photos-confident they'll come out looking lovely with no fear of not recognizing themselves or even worse hating what they see. I'll admit I'm extremely envious of these girls, the ones who are confident enough not to care and the ones who are beautiful enough to never know how it feels to hate what you see in the mirror. Lately I've realized I may never escape this feeling of dissatisfaction I have in myself, in the way I look, I compare myself to my sisters and come up short (or so I think, I've been told we're all of equal attractiveness but I just can't believe it), it's painful, like a dark cloud following you around all the time. There's a list of things I don't generally do because I don't feel I look right, there are things I feel I'll never deserve or be entitled too or have a chance at having because I don't look right. I don't even know how I look, it scares me.
I've been trying to get a handle on it but I think thinking about it has just made it worse. I posted on a site asking how I looked (no makeup selfie, the first photos of my self in about the last 10 years) and got a mixed response (2 below average but not without hope, 7 average and 6 pretty) far from helping that just made me wonder even more-which is it? Are people lying to make me feel better? Or lying to make me feel worse (I find this unlikely-what does that say about me?)? Or do they all just see something different?
I think that never having had a relationship plays into this a fair bit-you start looking for things that are wrong and appearance is an easy and obvious one to focus on. All I can say for sure is it sucks. I'm sick of thinking about it and I'm sick of myself for needing to think about it. Why does it matter? All I know is that it does. I feel like I want to retreat when I feel like this, just hole up in my room and not speak to anyone ever again. Which is stupid and won't help.
But I guess the take away message from this has to be that this has more of an affect on someone than you might at first imagine. It affects how you see yourself in the world. A world so heavily based on how we look-I'm sure many girls would choose being beautiful over being smart or funny or any number of things because it's the highest rated commodity of all.
Maybe I'm just seeing it all wrong. Maybe I'm seeing myself all wrong. I just don't know. I do know I'm sick of it.
Vanessa
