November 15, 2009
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When I’m alone
“When I’m alone I see myself as beautiful. It’s when I’m around others that I feel so ugly & flawed”
Lately, I’ve felt good about myself. I’ve felt pretty. I’ve stopped hating myself. I’ve started wearing my hair naturally and stopped feeling like maybe I should be wearing make-up. I’ve stopped criticizing every little thing about the girl in the mirror, and maybe kind of liking her.
And not only on the outside, I feel beautiful on the inside. I feel like I’m a good person, I know who I am, and I know what I want. I feel like I’ve finally found something I’m good at, something I love, and something I want to do. I feel happy.
But feeling so good about myself usually only happens when I’m alone. When I’m in my room and it’s only me and the mirror. When I’m at my computer typing away at poems, stories, and the random pieces of writing that make up my life. When I’m thinking about how happy I am.
When I step outside my room, outside my house, outside my comfort; I am no longer so beautiful.
Sometimes I feel like other people are judging me. When I’m getting ready for school, I look in the mirror, and I see a cute and confident girl. But it’s like when I get there, my hair isn’t good enough today, and maybe I shouldn’t have worn my glasses.
A lot of the time I wonder what other people think of me, people who don’t really know me, because no one at my school really knows me. They just think they do, and they all have perceptions of me but I often wonder what those are. I always think of the negative though. I think about the flaws they might pick out in me, or the things that I am not. I don’t think that maybe someone else thinks I’m beautiful too.
And sometimes I look at other people and how happy they are and how beautiful they are and I wish I wasn’t who I am. When I’m alone I like being introverted, creative, and slightly antisocial. I like to be alone, to have time to write, and to think. But when I look at how happy everyone else is, how many friends they have, how great it seems, I wish I wasn’t like this. I wish I wasn’t shy and awkward.
I see myself as unique, as someone who is so very different from the rest of the crowd. Someone who is real and someone who doesn’t pretend. But when I look at all the people around me, I wonder how many of them are as “unique” and “real” as me. I wonder if I’m just like the rest of them, but maybe I just don’t know it. I wonder if I’m worth something or just another penny among lots of dimes and quarters.
Maybe I just want to know who I am in comparison to everyone else. I always tell myself to stop comparing. I tell myself I’m a hypocrite as day after day I put up little notes telling some girl out there that she is beautiful, and sometimes I can’t even believe it about myself.
