What a shame. We grew up never believing that we were
beautiful,
because no one ever told us that we were. We made friends who
liked to complain about their stomachs, noses, and the size of
their thighs. And we joined in because that's what you do,
isn't it? And so, we never told ourselves, either.
In 8th grade, a boy we barely knew calls us fat. We will
never know if he
was joking, or why. We were bullied about our long, messy hair.
So we chop it all off. And we became invisible. It was years
before we resurfaced, before we learned to do things just for the
sake of ourselves.
Someone tells us we're beautiful, and now, we
don't believe them. But, we
have new friends and they tell us, too. And then we hear it from
a stranger. Mom apologizes for not telling us enough when we were
younger. And slowly, we start to belive it. And now, we know.
We know that, despite everything we'd been told,
being beautiful has
nothing to do with our worth. But, how unfortunate, we think,
that we couldn't know we were beautiful until someone else
told us that we were.
We were never even told it was an option.