When you have been the ugly girl
the outsider girl
the awkward girl
the not invited to the party girl
the sitting alone in the cafeteria girl,
you have something that
the girls and boys who fit in
all their lives
will never have.
You know how to be alone,
and absolutely love it
because you were so isolated,
that you were forced to love yourself.
You can walk into a room full of people
and not care about what any of them think
because you know it can’t possibly be worse
than what you’ve already been told to your face.
There are other days though,
where you are alone,
and you absolutely hate it
because the only thing that you can think about is
what purpose there could possibly be
for anyone to ever be so cruel to you.
You walk into a room full of people
and get hit with waves of anxiety and horror
because you imagine that you can hear what they are all thinking
about you and your body and your face and your hair
and the words feel like metal scraping the inside of your body.
There is so much
that you experience
in you own mind,
that you don’t think anyone
will ever understand
today, you are a beautiful woman,
and no one you know today
thinks of you as the ugly girl that you believe you are.
And you wish you could see you how they must see you.
They have a clean slate, yours has been dirtied by name calling and teasing.
You can’t see yourself without it
and they can’t see you with it.
No one will ever keep the ugly girl alive like you do
and no one can ever let her go like you should.
Christina Ariana 