This is the thing about having been teased a lot in middle school and never having been asked out a lot as a teenager or an adult...you develop this built-in immunity to daydreams and fantastical thinking, you really do. And you just know what your future love life holds (or, rather, does not hold) for you. You become so practical about it all (or, at least, you think you do) that it almost, almost, does not hurt.
There are days I am so very glad I am invisible (so very glad). The more intensely I feel about the person I like, the more I hate myself and the more I realize that my invisibility fits into this somehow...like I am SUPPOSED to be non-existent (in terms of being noticeable or paired off with someone else) because it reminds me (constantly) that I deserve no less (or is it no more?) than no one's love and because it really does make me invisible and irrelevant to anyone else, even to me.
I am not hot and never will be...I think that may be part of why I detest that word so much: "hot." I just so dislike it..to be so dismissive and de-valuing of another person just because they are not physically attractive...and to have "hot or not" lists and countless articles on Yahoo's home page about fashion "crimes" and actresses (never actors!) who dared to go out in public dressed a certain way. So often, the very first thing people ask when someone wants to set them up on a date is: "Is she pretty? Is he good-looking?" It is no wonder there are so many divorces and broken relationships in a society that values looks over personality. How sad it is that people often care more about whether someone else is attractive than whether he or she is a good person and has a big heart :(
I thought that being disqualified for romantic love would be an automatic and strategic defense against pain in that area of my life. But love is not always something we seek nor is it something we always actively do or even want: sometimes, no matter how hard we try not to, we fall in love anyway and with the one person we have no business feeling that way about.
In a side note: I found this online and it is just amazing (and so painfully easy to relate to some of the posts):
http://www.quora.com/What-does-it-feel-like-to-be-an-unattractive-woman
This part especially hit me hard:
Childhood and Youth
This
was honestly the hardest. Children can be cruel and overt in their
treatment of social misfits. I was teased mercilessly, especially by the
attractive "popular kids", on an ongoing basis from as early as first
grade. Here are just a few things that happened to me in grade school
and middle school:
- One boy sent me a fake love letter,
which I unfortunately believed was true until the punchline was
delivered to me in front of a group of other kids.
- My assigned
seatmate on the bus made me sit in the aisle because I was "too fat" to
sit on the seat, and regularly poured soda into my hair on the 45-minute
long drive to school.
- I was only allowed to be friends with
other unattractive people, which actually worked out because they were
often the nicest and funniest kids. One pretty but awkward girl I was
friends with took a chance to promote her social status by ditching me
publicly at recess. It made perfect sense; she was too pretty for the
ugly kids' group.
- I only got valentine's day cards from the teachers.
- I
had crushes on people but knew that I could never be the object of
someone else's affection. I went to school dances alone, if at all. I
didn't exchange cute "if you like me, check this box" notes. I didn't go
to boy/girl parties and giggle about "making out" the next day.
- I
learned to be okay with spending a lot of time alone. Being an
unattractive girl doesn't just make it hard to get a date. It makes it
hard to make friends at all, especially in the tweens when a lot of the
other girls are very focused on appearance.
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| If you have mutually-reciprocated love in your life, never ever forget how lucky the two of you are. :) |
