I Am My Worth

5'8 feet, 135lbs., 15% body fat, curvy, no scars or physical ailments and a face that many people didn't take damage from (or at least only one person ever admitted to me having a horrible smile).  You would think a girl would be happy with her looks.  It goes to prove that your physical body screaming "hey I'm every bit as thin as a Vogue model and I've got my health" doesn't mean you feel it.

Even with the mirror proving that I was every bit as beautiful as I'd ever be, I didn't believe it.  I'd see a face that was an alien.  I mean literally, I thought my face was, well, freakish.  Huge eyes, long horse face and a chin that narrowed down to a point so sharp you could cut diamonds with.  No other girls I'd seen had hips like mine.  Girls thighs were just as flat as guys and mine are "well defined".  So I accepted what I had, which in itself was a sort of confidence that guys like, and never found myself for want.

Accepting and loving are two very different things and until it was ten years after my senior picture I really saw things differently.  I was in my dad's office (then it was McKibben Communications) and I turned around and came face to face with the eighteen year old me.  My senior picture brought me this epiphany that I shall not soon forget.  There I was, younger, more adorable, even thinner and smiling.  Who is she?  I thought.  Oh.  That was me. 

Now some of you don't ever change from high school and I'd say I hadn't drastically changed but changed enough to remember how the younger me felt like an adopted alien.  Honestly I still felt like an adopted alien ten years later.  But that picture made me think to myself, "And I thought I was ugly."  Side by side to my best friend Nicole, I was a gunny sack wearing, buck toothed, straw-haired, dull eyed red-headed step-child.  She was the glamourous one everybody wanted, I was "Stephanie? Ick." 

Some women go through life thinking they are the red-headed step-child but when I came face to face with the eighteen year old me at twenty eight I had a resolve that would not wear off.  I will stop wishing my body had thinner thighs or flatter stomach because what I have today is going to be a hell of a lot better than ten years from now.  "I am beutiful", I said outloud.  Not was, not will be, right now.

Whenever the epiphany fades I look in the mirror and command myself to say, "You are beautiful" until it converts to "I am beautiful".  That saying of "if people say it enough times you'll believe it" works if you say it too.  I had to repeat the words until I believed it with conviction. 

Pity for oneself is demeaning.  I've not relayed this story for confirmation or compliment.  It was simply the truth of how I felt.  I do not feel that way anymore.  This story is for that twenty-eight year old that looks in the mirror and felt the way I did.  This story is for my niece who doesn't have the confidence yet to realize she could match up to Angelina Jolie.  It's for my brother who might think he's some ordinary looking guy and my mom who might think her laugh lines make her "look old".  It's for my friends who think the grey in their hair signifies anything other than a change of color pigment.  If you don't see what I see then you need to look in the mirror and say it with me outloud...

I Am My Worth because I feel it.