“i am a pretty girl.”

i came across this blogpost, Beauty is in the Eye of the Toothbrush Holder the other day. its beauty and honesty stunned me. even more when i discovered that it came from the fingertips of a 24-year old.

no fair.

i don't think i truly started having moments of epiphanous self-love like this until my late 20s or early 30s. i still struggle, dammit, and it pisses me off. for instance, due to the heat, humidity and a hearty case of PMS, my face has broken out into a constellation of pink stars. it is so very hard for me to look at myself in the mirror and not see red, angry tittles screaming back at me:

mwahahahahahahaaaaa! i shall ruin your life!

it is so very hard for me not to hear my grandmother's voice circa 1994, when i was struggling with a particularly bad collegiate breakout, spoken as if she were offering me some bit of revelatory advice:

well...do you ever wash your face?

so, yeah, i still struggle with seeing The Truth in the mirror. The Truth that yes, i have zits sometimes, my skin doesn't look like airbrushed porcelain, but it's still pretty damn clear. my eyes are a bright hazel-amber that remind me of my mom's. my nose works, and i have pretty great cheekbones.

unlike when i was 24, i now have a hefty dose of perspective. the zit is no longer who i am, it's just part of who i am TODAY. and, this time 'round, i know it won't last. not a bit of it. the acne. the undereye circles. the bright hazel-amber eyes. the sculpted cheekbones. the zits'll clear up in the next week or two. the undereye circles will do the same with a good night's sleep and plenty of H20. the bright eyes will eventually slope and crinkle around the edges. the cheekbones will lose their striking prominence with the inevitable weight gain that will come with (hopefully) bearing children and a ripe and probably rounder middle age.

so, for today, i'm gonna try to look forward to changing, for better or for worse. change means i'm alive. dead people certainly don't get zits, but then, they're DEAD...and i can always dab on a little concealer.