Vanity is interesting. I loathe vanity and yet I am burdened by it. I would love for the world to be a place where women did not get judged one way or another by how they look; but the world is never going to be such a place. It would be almost tolerable if people could admire beautiful women without needing to make other women feel like they’re worth nothing by comparison; but I guess at the end of the day, it’s on us if we allow other people to make us feel less worthy because we’re not beautiful.
I used to get teased about my looks when I was a young girl. I got called ugly by my Junior High School peers on a daily basis; and unfortunately I didn’t have the kind of mental toughness to get through the experience unscathed. I was already quite painfully shy and self-conscious. I had also by then already been brainwashed into believing that a girl’s looks determine her worth and that the only way for her to win admiration is to be beautiful. So to be called ugly every day didn’t just hurt my ego in the moment, it penetrated deep into my psyche and killed off my self esteem, little by little, until every last bit of it was gone.
I have pretty much spent my entire life feeling inadequate and inferior because of my looks. Even as a little girl I had a desperate need to feel worthy of admiration. I think I was very much conflicted because, even though I had no outward self-confidence to show for it, I did believe that I was worthy of admiration. Even if I wasn’t going around thinking I was the most beautiful girl in town, I didn’t think I was ugly at all, much less to be so ugly that people should make fun of me. But people made fun of me anyway and their ridicule had long-reaching and devastating impact.
I didn’t understand when I was younger that what I most needed to do was to learn to value, appreciate and love myself, regardless what people thought of me. While I do understand it now, understanding it doesn’t erase any of the things that happened to me as a result of giving away my power for so long, and abusing myself to the extent that I have seen my life as being unworthy to be lived, as recently as today, because other people have not esteemed me and have not valued me the way I’ve desired to be esteemed and valued by them.
For the crimes I have committed, and continue to commit against myself, I pay a price every day in the life that I live. I might never be able to repair the damage; but this is me taking the first step to seriously trying not to do any further damage.