It's Okay When you Feel like you Don't Shine like the other Girls

"I know things seem hard right now. You don’t shine like the other girls, your heart is loud but you keep it quiet."

honestly, I don't shine like they all do;

never have and never will

but perhaps i forever held something within me that was something likened to shards of light;

after all, there is beauty in imperfection

I swear - they've just got "it"

and I usually catch myself wondering for as long as I've been alive -

whether I'll ever attain the acceptance that they pepper the commoner prairies where you lie.

I bask in the sun, merely absorbing the rays of harm as they glisten with that striking balance of a tan and worldwide beauty standards. I try and try to emanate their light, their radiating vibes that compel appeal and popularity but I just feel like too much of an imposter and a try-too-hard wannabe at fitting in. I was never meant to fit in.

As I'm writing this, I want so badly to talk about how downright ugly I feel as I pale in comparisons to all the girls who bloom around me. I'm constantly surrounded by grade A prototypes of beauty - the beauticians of the fields. I've always perceived myself as a weed and for anyone to suggest otherwise completely baffles me. I want so badly to make this a post of self pity and that was honestly the 'inspiration' behind this post but I'm forcing myself to write it out as a productive catharsis - so bear with me!

I have spent my whole life comparing myself to other girls and sometimes even guys especially when I was deep in my ED and yknow how guys biologically have a lower body fat percentage - I still make body frame and physical weight a huge determining factor of whether i'll consider any guy in fear of him triggering me. For as long as I can remember, I've been the 'ugliest of the lot' or simply the let down in terms of appearance. I stood out starkly in the line of petite pale-skinned beauties in the ballet studio, with a disposition so disappointing, I swore that mirrors stayed in place out of grace to give me some form of face. I tottered around with the immense weight that I bore that shamefully juxtaposed against the feather-light jumps of the pristine pretties beside me. I was out of place from the beginning.

I could go on endlessly about how I was the ugly kid - of how i was so desperate that i combed my skin when i was just 5, thinking that the sheer force of combing would extend the momentary relieving sight of white skin before the redness blossomed from those scratch marks. I was so ashamed of my skin color that resorted to that, skin whitening creams, in fact, it became the main reason why i quit ballet, swimming and tennis as i avoided the sun like the plague. I'm not saying that being dark-skinned makes anyone less beautiful (that's just downright cray because of all the gorgeous people I know who aren't pale like what I imagined beauty as). I simply followed the norms that i saw around me, and as an impressionable child, i assumed that any anomaly from the majority i knew made me an atrocious monster who should never see the light of day.

I relied on braces to fix my teeth;

years of failed medicated pimple creams before going to the last resort (as my GP told me) in any skin care remedy - antibiotic pills; my face today was only made possible with multiple rounds of everyday doses of pimple pills that cost $200 per month. It was so expensive but I could not bear another day on top of my 17 years shrouding in fear, shame and ridiculously fake filter applications.

Up to this day, despite some people telling me that I'm beautiful, I truly cannot see anything worth admiring or regarded as pretty.

I don't know if it's the course I'm in but seriously every girl in my university makes me feel like a shriveled raisin, ghastly to the human eye. Particularly, the clique of people who took me in - I'm in serious awe of their tolerance to be around me - one who would drag down the dynamic of the group's collective beauty. I had to prance in like some unruly bull in a china shop and wreck the balance of pristine perfection that they all possessed - that i oh so longed for.

You know the typical line from Taylor Swift's 'You Belong with Me'?

Yeah totally that line

I seriously don't get why I bother trying to fit into their standard of amazing appearances with my feeble and tremendously failed attempts at looking 'nice' enough.

I don't put on make up like every other girl you meet my age.

I don't put it on because I feel like it brings me back to the days when I had to rely on beautifying apps to make me look decent. I fear the same shame I would feel if I went bare faced on some days. I fear being judged for being undeserving to buy anything to make me look better; I fear being judged as the girl who was too desperate to be noticed and liked, making me an attention whore which I dreaded so badly. I don't put it on because I fear the gossip that would punctuate the air around me as I walk around with the usual make-up, with people guffawing at my piecemeal attempt at covering up my ugly that could never be rectified with any amount of makeup.

These couple of weeks, mainly the week that just passed has been the hardest in terms of daring to look up and face people. I have been so so darn ashamed of the way I look that I forbade myself to leave the house unless I had to for school or work - and even then, I covered by face with tendrils of hair plastered over my face to hopefully do the world a favor by hiding the grossness underneath. I was absolutely terrified of looking in any mirror, extremely cautious not to accidentally click the reverse selfie function when i took a picture of anything with my phone. I was immensely afraid of bearing my countenance as my own to face the world literally.

I know I have come up with darkly humorous comebacks like in my ESL407 presentation:

"I took a blurry shot of your ootd because I'm considering all your followers on Instagram - I'm saving them from looking at you clearly because honey, do you honestly think you should be seen on peoples' feeds looking like this?"

Little did anyone know but those were just permutations of the nasty things that have filled my brain from idk how long ago.

Recently, I broke that rule I made to stay inside, hidden like a hermit crab, away from humanity to spare them and their eyes of this contaminant that I felt that I was. I took a step out of my house to meet my sister for an acai smoothie after my last day of Spring 2017. I got out of the house, without the comforting flops of hair covering my face and i (though gingerly at first), walked into the cafe and talked to her, where she could get a clear view of my face, which i was so goddamn sure, I would never be able to do again for a long while as I was in my then hibernation mode.

I realized one thing from this.

Sure, I don't shine like the other girls;

but i have combusted with courage to face the world even in my ugliest days;

that may not have been the flawless light that I had hoped for, but I had overlooked the fact that I always had and will continue to exude that same flickering shard of the beauty in imperfection.

I've collapsed into the darkest sky and I will spark again, just like every time into the star i should never forget I'm capable of returning to.