Confessions of an Ugly Swan

or a formerly cute duckling, whichever you prefer

I. Am. Ugly.

Do you know how many times I said those words to myself? Do you know how deeply I internalized those words as the cause and explanation for heartbreak?
So, how did I come to such a conclusion about myself?
One source: My Mother

She unwittingly helped me to understand this “truth.” I remember that moment. I was in the house I grew up in standing next to our trio of short Cherrywood book cases that help my library of encyclopaedias, Britannica, because Google didn’t really exist when I was a kid and the internet was still a mythical echo to the masses.

I listened to my mother list off of her things the things I was.
“You’re black.” Check!
“You’re fat.” I prefer the term ‘big boned’ as I am taller than average and, but…fine. Check!
“You’re ugly.”

The breath stuck in my lungs and inside a heard a low wail that made my chest ache and my eyes twitch burn, but I had to hold it in. If you’ve never heard the sound of your heart break, this is it. It’s not only the tinkling shatter and falling pieces. It’s the disembodied cries that you can’t stop because you didn’t know something could come from that deep.

I took her words, wrapped them all together and wore them because if that’s what my mother thought of me, how could she be wrong?

That meant I would never be special or worth or valuable because an ugly girl was cursed with not being able to justify herself. She had no currency to pay the rent she needed for justifying her presence. There was no reason for her to take up that space if she was ugly.

It wasn’t until eleven that it was confirmed that others saw the same thing. I met a boy and before I knew what hit me, he was all I thought about. That ‘love sneaking up on you’ business is no joke. After listening to a friend, I told him my feelings. Of course, he rejected me because, well, I was ugly.

No boy would ever want to be with me. And while it hurt, I accepted what I was. But I also accepted another truth I saw in myself: I was smart.

I focused on school and ignored my ugly because I was smart.
My grades shot up to the point where my name was announced over the PA system and my homeroom class collectively moaned “NERD!” (Proud moment)

I got into a magnet program.
Finally! I’d found the currency to pay my rent.

Over the years, I shut off a whole part of myself because it was too painful to face my ugly truth and being smart was working for me. But the truth doesn’t hide and trying to run away from you is an exhausting exercise in futility.

By the time I was forced to face the truth of how I thought of myself, I had banked enough of my other assets to buoy my self-confidence and esteem to decent levels but the pink elephant in the room was still a hard sucker to wrangle.

To numb yourself takes a concerted effort and I pulled it off most of the time because I can be ridiculously disciplined. Any urges I had to liking boys meant I had to figuratively cut out that part of myself. Those kinds of feelings and emotions where the opposite sex was concerned? I told myself that there was no point in acting as if I had a right to like them. I tried to deny my normal teenage existence by really clamping down on my burgeoning sexuality, which manifested itself in mooning over some boy or writing bad poetry. I was ugly, seriously, and fantasy pining was what George Michael songs were for!

Thus far in life, I had learned a few things:
◊◊ Since I wasn’t pretty enough to be noticed or considered as worthy by boys, I would be fine with being noticed for my good grades.
◊◊ Since no one was noticing me, I would observe other people and make up scenarios and stories about them and their lives. People-watching was my favorite pastime.
◊◊ Since no boy would ever want me, I would have friends whom I loved and laughed with. That would be enough. It had to be because I wouldn’t have anything more than that.

In cauterizing my emotions, I developed scars that would stay with me for as long as I lived. That numbness was the price I had to pay if I wanted to come to terms with my truth. It hurt but when I fought myself, I just had to step away from everything and seek refuge in music, reading and writing, where I would routinely pull myself apart, reopening those wounds and salting them because that was the only way I could satisfy my primal need to feel something.

That was my ritual for years.

As a result, I had developed a distinct division in my being, where my internal darkness eclipsed my reality in startling ways that robbed me of precious memories. Imagine being so deeply inside yourself that if someone was beside me calling my name, I wouldn’t see or hear them. I remembered friends saying they called to me loudly and I just kept walking. I had to tell them that I hadn’t heard them.

Eventually, I had to admit that something wasn’t right. I had enough in me to ask for help because I knew that whatever was going on with me, I couldn’t fix it on my own. That year-and-a-half was the crack that showed me some sort of light. I needed to not only see the light but to realize that I deserved to see it. That it was actually something for me.

It would take more than a decade of trials, errors, relationships that weren’t right as well as those that were right at the time for me to arrive to where I am today. The progress I have made through readings that started with Louise Hay to Maya Angelou, to Napoleon Hill to Katherine Woodward Thomas (her book was and is a breakthrough for me) as well as many others in between.

And here’s what I’ve learned about the big U-G-L-Y:
►I own my scars and the narratives that come with them. They are my cushion, my armor, my wounds, whatever I need them to be at a given time. Sometimes they ache but they no longer cause me the same pain as they once did. They are there and will always be there and that’s okay.
►Ugly is relative. One person’s idea of what beauty should be doesn’t equal the same as others. Those who choose to belittle by calling someone out as ugly tell on themselves more than they think. That’s their journey to walk.
►Ugly is not about the superficial. It’s way deeper than that. I have met the most gorgeous people, men in particular, who suddenly had zero appeal to me thanks to what came out of their mouths or their actions. I have also met men and women whom I may not have initially found appealing but in talking to them and getting to know them, I could eat them up! Ugly is not about gap teeth, hip size, waist circumference, muffin top, camel toes or other indictments against a human body. If you believe that you are more than what you look like, you’re not compensating for a perceived lack or a loss in the genetic lottery. You’re daring to see yourself as a whole person. Being whole is essential.
►I am not pretty. I’m just not nor do I want to be. To me, ‘Pretty’ is a word that sounds tinny and hollow. Beautiful is another term that is currently under siege by society and is being used to describe a host of empty vessels. I’ve been called gorgeous, handsome, Queen, Empress, I’m good with those. My personal goal? To be radiant. That means I’m letting my light shine from the inside out and you can’t L’Oreal/MAC/Maybelline that! I think it’s safe until someone comes up with an app for that.
►I’m a work in progress and will forever be so. But who I was, what I went through, that’s the foundation on which I have and am building. Just as others have an opinion about how un/attractive I may be, I too have my opinion about them and that seems to make some of them nervous. What can I say? Some one-way back alleys can be converted to two-way streets.
►Perception isn’t the whole truth and that’s why we need to forgive. I confronted my mother years after about what she said and she didn’t remember it that way. For a while, that didn’t sit right because I wanted her to remember and tell me why. I wanted to hash that shit out. She said she was quoting a common saying of “You may be black, fat, and ugly…blah blah” and trying to tell me something more positive. It took some time but I decided to let that incident be a catalytic moment in my history than to continually relive the pain of what I heard and understood from my mother.
Before she died, Mom and I were more than cool. I counted her as one of my best friends.

I gave up 90% of my pain that there’s that 10% that will come up. That’s fine. I’ll deal with it. From time to time that ‘ugly’ word comes up. It no longer hangs around like it used to because I’ve found a truth that is becoming more and more mine:

I. Am. Enough.

Originally Posted on Medium