write
I hope you're not assholes anymore. I hope you have grown up to be good people. I hope you know how much pain you caused me.
I remember the day clearly even though I'm in college now- I'll never forget. I was sitting in science class minding my own business. I was in eighth grade. I was happy and laughing about something one of the boys at my assigned table said. I thought he was cute. I thought since I was sitting with the popular kids that maybe they would realize how nice I was and want to be my friend. I was wrong because suddenly him and his friend turned to me and literally stared through my soul...
..."Don't laugh," they said with smirks on their faces. "You're not cute, you're not allowed to laugh...Don't act like you're cute..."
Everybody snickered at me. I was mortified. I was ashamed. I was hurt.
Instead of hating them, I hated myself. I hated myself for still having braces and a couple of zits. I hated myself for my stupid frizzy hair, my flat chest, the way I never ever seemed to wear the right outfit or hangout with the right people. I hated myself for laughing. I hated myself for trying to believe and harboring hope that anyone would ever accept me.
If that same situation were to happen today, I would have probably told those boys how sad and insecure they are. I would have stood up for myself...but the worst part about all of this is that that would not ever ever happen to me today. Because today I am beautiful.
I don't say that to validate myself, I couldn't care less. Because there is a bigger picture to all of this. There is a lesson here. A basic lesson about humanity that needs to be learned and remembered. In our world today, people constantly associate worth with beauty, and that is a lie. That is a lie because the way someone looks should not and does not determine how capable they are. How smart they are. How interesting, cool, unique, or valuable they are. Looks should not determine the way we view others, or the way we view ourselves. There is more to life than how we look, yet we allow something as superficial as our looks to determine the majority of our experiences and interactions.
After eighth grade, High School and puberty happened all at once. People-boys especially-started to notice me. At first, I thought it was just another joke that they were actually calling me attractive. They were paying attention to me? I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear and never show my face again. I didn't think that I could possibly endure another year of people calling me ugly. But...as time went on I began to realize that they weren't joking about my looks. They liked the way I looked. But...did they like me? Would they ever? I was still the same exact person on the inside, the same exact person they didn't want anything to do with just months before.
It is absolutely heartbreaking how differently people treat other people based soley off their level of attractiveness. Honestly...what is "attractive?" I'm pretty sure that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what one person finds appealing, someone else might not. Why can't people be okay with this? Why can't everyone just be more accepting?
I remember the day I received a Myspace message, yes Myspace, from the boy who told me not to laugh, because I was ugly...because I wasn't cute. He told me how "hot" I had become and asked if I wanted to hangout. Did he even remember all the awful things he said to me previously? Did he even care?
That was when I learned another life lesson. I learned to be careful about what I say to people. That boy probably doesn't even remember saying those things to me but they affected my everyday life for years in an extremely significant way. His words affected my self worth in a negative way and shaped the way I viewed myself for a long time. For years, there was not a day that went by where I did not look in the mirror and hear his biting words ringing in my ears, haunting me. There was not a day that I liked the person I saw in the mirror.
Yet, as High School went on, I learned to love myself. I'll spare the mushy details of self-acceptance. But...I NEVER gave anyone who tortured me in High School the satisfaction of knowing me. To me, that was enough. I am forever grateful for being bullied because it showed me who my true friends were and helped me to understand that looks are not everything, despite what society constantly tries to brainwash us into thinking.
I am not mad at myself for letting people who meant so little to me, affect me so much. When I was younger, I didn't care about my individuality. I just wanted to be accepted. However, being "accepted" by people who don't really care for you and only care about what you can "offer" them is the lonesliest feeling in the world. Now, I understand the importance of self-respect and for that I am also grateful.
It is easy to judge people by the way they look. I am guilty of it sometimes, but I am trying not to each new day. I think it's an important life lesson to STOP being vain and judgmental about people who look different than we do. Just because someone looks different than we do doesn't mean we can't get along...we might even like each other. Just because someone isn't up to our "standards" doesn't mean that they aren't valuable. Everyone deserves the right to be cherished, no matter what they look like.
So, to the boys who told me I was ugly before I became beautiful-Thank you once again for making me a better person and teaching me that there is more to life than only looking beautiful, because beauty is a LOT more than a pretty face.
