These words

You’re ugly.

Seven years later, I can remember my ten-year-old self spitting these words at my reflection as though it were yesterday.

Ten years old was the age I learned to hate myself.

It was the year Polly Pockets were replaced with pads, Barbies with bras, and perfect skin with pimples.

I wasn’t like the other girls in my grade. I thought reading was much more interesting than boys. I thought that knee-high socks, neon pink suspenders, and stripes with polka-dots was an acceptable outfit. And I thought that being me was enough.

I quickly realized that it wasn’t.

Just be normal.

I whispered these words to myself my first day of middle school.

Being normal was the only way to be accepted.

It was the only way I could save myself from the constant torment of having to be me.

I tried.

I failed.

I failed at being pretty.

I failed at being liked.

I failed at fitting in.

The seed of self-hatred blossomed.

You have a lot of potential.

These words were said to me by my English teacher my freshman year of high school.

By fourteen years old, I’d learned that I wasn’t particularly the most talented person in the world.

I couldn’t sing.

I couldn’t dance.

Cheerleading was specifically created for people who are not me.

But, I could write.

I could take all my ugly, horrid thoughts and turn them into something beautiful.

I began to write down anything. Everything.

Every secret desire, every terrible day, the occasional good one; I wrote them all down.

With each poem, with each story, the universe seemed to stop chuckling at me.

Writing saved me

I’ve never said these words aloud out of fear of sounding crazy.

But each time that I’m able to smile at myself in the mirror or laugh at those who hate me they ring loud and clear in my head.

Writing saved me from me.

It helped me to embrace my nappy hair, my bow-legged legs, and the freckles on my feet.

Writing is the acid rain that destroyed my seed of self-hatred.