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things that are hard to write

I will never be beautiful

I will never be beautiful.

I’m not saying this because I want or need reassurance. It’s the knee jerk reaction, and I understand that, when someone sounds like they’re feeling down about themselves. But I’m not feeling down about myself, and I don’t think reassurance really works, for all its good intentions.

I’ve spent my entire life being told by others that I look okay, that I’m pretty, that I’m beautiful. It doesn’t matter how many times I hear it, it feels like a well-meaning lie. I don’t feel beautiful; I don’t have the necessary magic to look in a mirror and see myself as anything but the sum of my flaws. I don’t think you can convince someone that they are beautiful, or smart, or talented, if they truly don’t believe it themselves. I hear that I’m beautiful when I feel ugly. I hear that I’m beautiful when I don’t even look like myself any more.

There’s something wrong with me, or there’s something wrong with that word.

Some people want to redefine beautiful and I say, good for you, do it. But what I want is to be free of the tyranny of that goddamn word. Beautiful is nothing but a series of endlessly moving goal posts. It’s the unattainable, and people are ruthlessly mocked for not being able to attain it.

Rachael Author Photo 2

Beautiful has murdered countless women and men since its invention. We starve ourselves while surrounded by food, break our own bones, destroy our muscles and tendons, die from infections caused by this and that cosmetic tweak. At least when people die for love, they get immortalized in odes. Being disfigured for beauty just invites more mockery, for being superficial, for trying to please people who will never be pleased. It’s a no-win game.

And why should the fuckability rating complete strangers put on me have any grip on my soul? That isn’t what moves me.
No matter what I look like, I’m still me. Is there anything more pointless than trying to hammer myself into a foreign shape for the benefit of a word? Better to try to use whatever art I have in my soul to try to get the outside to match the inside so I can finally be content.I’ve cried more tears over beautiful and the way it’s twisted me up than I have over all of my dead relatives combined, and I feel fucking ashamed to admit that. I’ve spent years wondering why I can’t find a dress that doesn’t make me feel shakingly stupid when I would have better spent the time and energy trying to figure out who the hell I am.

I will never be beautiful.

I will never be beautiful.

But I will always be me.