At my age, I’m supposed to try to be “hot.” Of course, the trouble with all of this “hot” “sweep me off my feet” crap is all too relative to seriously discuss. Okay, so I’d say I’m not some super-sexy, drop-dead-gorgeous, wet dream inducing playgirl. My breasts are real, and they rise and fall like the tides depending hormones and weight. My hair is its natural old boring brown shade. I have split ends. My breath smells like soured milk in the morning. My thighs jiggle. My rear—oh don’t even get me started—I recall being eight and realizing that I had cellulite on my butt, and this was before I entered my awkward fat stage. My toes are unattractive—really unattractive. My vision isn’t the greatest. My glasses aren’t even those sexy librarian glasses. I’m neither short enough to be cute nor tall enough to be a knockout. I have man calves. My knees and elbows are scarred because I’m clumsy. My teeth are large—freakishly so—and even after my having braces for two years, my teeth still aren’t entirely strait. I am perfectly imperfect.
Despite these imperfections, I have a desire to be loved. I don’t need to be a “hottie,” but at some point in my life, it would be nice for someone to find me attractive for all of my traits—attractive or not. For instance, I like to walk around the house in old t-shirts, gym shorts, and oddly patterned socks. I have crazy skin allergies that leave me itchy, red, and puffy the majority of the year; these allergies are only made worse by my love of cats (to which I am horribly allergic). I love nothing more than being alone outside doing anything. Send me outside with a book or running shoes or gardening gloves and some sunscreen and I am perfectly content. I am the most obsessively compulsive messy person known to humankind; my room is always clean, but my closet is always a wreck. I watch people to a degree that almost makes me seem like a stalker, but there is something about people’s mannerisms that fascinates me. Despite the fact that I study people, I’m unobservant when it’s important. My sense of direction is awful. My sense of humor is worse; hell, I’m not even as funny as I am awkward, yet people assume that I mean to be funny. I’m a pretty hard worker, but I’m not particularly smart. I’m insecure above all else, though people have told me that I seem very confident. I can’t take compliments. The list goes on and on.
Okay, so it’s true that I could stand to be more confident, but I don’t think that you have to believe that you are “gorgeous” in the traditional sense to be confident. I am happy with myself and with the fact that I am not a centerfold. My problem is with people who assume that just because I have accepted being average I am somehow less confident than people who think that they are the be-all and end-all. My expectation is that someday, I will run into someone who finds the qualities that most people would consider quirky at best attractive. Why change my realistic, though perhaps somewhat skewed, perception of myself when I wouldn’t want to be with any man who would love any other version of me? The answer is, of course, that there is no reason for me to change. Self-deprecation is part of the appeal, and someday, someone will get that and the two of us will live moderately happy for as long as we both live or until he cheats on me with a man, and, as a result, I stuff rocks in my pockets and jump into a river.
Life Imitating Art Imitating Life
