find yourself ugly

When I was little, I thought I was pretty, I felt pretty. Some might ask me: “But how do you find this feeling?” To be honest, I can't answer. I just know that I have never felt unbeautiful, ugly.

Coming to France, at the age of 7, what I said above completely changed. I began to see myself, to perceive myself, and to recognize that beyond being outside the norm, everything pointed at me and made me feel like I wasn't pretty. In this ranking of the most beautiful girls (boys in the trash, haha), I was at best not in the list, at worst last. When we had to role play, I didn't always have the most advantageous or flattering roles. Everything pointed towards me with these obvious facts: I was not a model of Barbies or beauty standards.

I remember that very early on, when I was able to act on my appearance, namely using artificial tools that allowed me to redesign myself, I did it directly, without thinking for a second. I started by straightening my hair (since everything suggested that mine was not presentable or pretty) and wearing contact lenses in all the colors of the rainbow: first green, then brown, then green and gray.

At the very beginning, it was for practicality. I played sports, I needed to not have something on my nose that would prevent me from moving, from running, from jumping. Then, little by little, very quickly, without me realizing it, it became my second skin, sorry, my second eyes. I was starting to no longer accept my look without these double disks that I put in the morning, first thing on my face.

Looking back, I wonder how this addiction happened. Yes, I rightly use the word addiction, because it was impossible for me to stop wearing them, I could no longer stand my reflection without them. After reflection, I understand that it happened because I finally saw myself existing in people's eyes, I saw myself alive, complimented, pretty. That's when I understood that existence was relative, that if we don't know how to exist through self-perception, we can only exist through the perception of others. If the other does not notice us, then we do not exist.

It was also at this same time that I imagined myself being a model. For what ? Because it would send a signal to others that an institution that dominated the image of beauty had validated me, a standard on the Mounts of Olympus that I was beautiful. Which caused me to have EDs, dysmorphism, to see myself as fat when I was a twig, to constantly pay attention to what I ate, feeling guilty about my weight gain, my shape. Although it was just a few years ago, before the arrival of the Kardashians and Beyoncé who highlighted the beauty of shapes, no one wanted to have buttocks, breasts, anything that stuck out. You had to be smart.

It's hard to love yourself when you think that all of schooling and adolescence is conditioned by what our exterior reflects. Because no one teaches us how to be, we are taught to learn things by heart, to never question and above all to never have our own opinion. So I was judged on two parameters: physical and academic. I use the word academic not to say intelligence, because everyone makes fun of that. What is important are the grades, the pride of parents in telling their group of friends that their sons, daughters, are first in the class, have received congratulations, have skipped a grade.

With these features that I knew how to wear, hair, eyes, I felt myself getting closer to what society considered “pretty”. Indeed, at the top of the podium, we had the white girls with light eyes, secondly the brown girls with light eyes and all other variations, and third the mixed-race girls, curly hair and light eyes. Of course, this statistic is not official, as third place could be in the lead or vice versa.

I remember a very special moment, I must have been 16 years old. I was leaving my house and in the parking lot I realized one thing: this face, which was mine, I would have all my life, all my life, only there had no way of escaping it, of breaking away from it.

After years of falling out of love, of misfitting, I learned to be. What is it, you will ask me, “to be”? Learning to be is simply learning to look at yourself, to dissect your face and to begin to see what is unique and singular about it and little by little, to love it. Even if we don't look like that girl you see on the networks, that girl who, every time you go out, gets noticed or accosted. Learning to be also means detaching yourself from “having”, understanding that your possessions do not define you, that they betray you more than anything else. It is also learning to delve into yourself, to close your eyes and become your greatest confidant. It is also understanding that beyond everything that exists on this Earth, whether it is our friends, our family, whoever it may be, at the end of the day, we only have our own company, 7 days a week. 7, 24 hours a day. It is necessary to love yourself, to appreciate yourself, to be in your company, to be to your liking; to be to one's taste before wanting to be to the taste of others, to love oneself before others love us, to respect oneself before wanting, to expect respect from others.

When you think about it, it's also fortunate, ultimately, not to have been socialized around your beauty. You know why ? Because it can also be a curse. Being seen because you are beautiful also means finding your value only in your beauty, in the perception that your value only exists if you are desired, desirable. If men notice you, if people see you and compliment you on your physique. It's not feeling appreciated if a man doesn't see you, don't take your clothes off. It's also unconsciously having to compete with your girlfriends, your friends, to ensure that no one will steal the spotlight. It's relying on this dark side of superficiality and having a panic fear of old age and even changing standards of beauty, because maybe one day, you will no longer be the one to whom all eyes will turn. Finally, it's also focusing everything on the physical, through clothes, sport, sometimes surgery... always with this sweet and crazy fear of being downgraded, of being part of the “not pretty”. So you sometimes repeat “oh I don’t think I’m pretty” so that others deny your position and feel your self-esteem gradually recover.

Finding oneself beautiful, finding oneself ugly, these are basically two phases of the same play, because we do not concentrate on being, that which is invisible, that of self-love.

Favoring being over having means building oneself little by little, taking the time, being patient because everything that is built is built with patience, like the bird which, little by little, makes its nest. Be kind, be understanding of yourself, listen, be the one you want to spend time with, take care of yourself, but above all spend time with yourself, and face your fears the deepest without forgetting that we are the only ones to face them and find the solution that comes with them. Be careful, I'm not saying that the solution is two meters, no, otherwise it would be much too simple. I say that the solution is deep within us, closer than we think, less dense than what we project. It's here, ready to be explored, as long as we decide to confront it.

Otherwise, we are condemned, as I was for years, not to love ourselves, not to look at ourselves and to hide behind these artifices. Today, I think I'm beautiful, at least I like it. I like what I am, I like what I look like. I know that some will say the opposite, but I have learned that the most important thing in life is our power of perception: how we perceive the world but also how we perceive ourselves. Being able to redirect the camera towards yourself and making the conscious and unwavering choice to find yourself beautiful is something that no one can take away from us because we, like anyone else in this world, have the power to direct ourselves, to direct ourselves. imagine and love ourselves strongly, unconditionally. Love our body for what it can do, love our being because it protects us tirelessly and with all its strength, even when we sleep.

I hope this post has awakened your desire to be, at least for one person.

Kisses.