“You look like a monkey!” The kids teased as they played four corners with a dodgeball.
One boy took a deep breath in and held the air in his cheeks, crossed his eyes and pulled his ears away from his face at the same time. “EEEEEEEEEEEK EEEEEEEEEEK!”
This was her fourth school this school year, her parents consistently switched schools because of the bullying and every school felt the same. She decided to hide her skin- her arms and her legs by always wearing jeans or sweats and a sweater that covered her arms. Even on the hottest days, she never took off her sweater. She never wore shorts to reveal her legs. She would come home and tell the same lie to her parents that school was great, faked a smile and told stories about her “friends.”
She sat with her parents at the dinner table and listened in on her parent’s work day. Complicated clients and deals in escrow is all she heard. She zoned out and played with her food with her fork and threw her broccoli on the floor for her wiener dog, Luna, to eat. She pushed the rest of her food to one side of her plate to make it seem like she ate half of her dinner. After a couple minutes of swirling her fork in mashed potatoes, she threw the rest out and went upstairs to journal in her room. She wrote every day and got emotional every single time. Tears dripped on to her pages, smearing ink. She cried for acceptance and beauty.
I watched her critique every part of her body. She had caramel brown hair that fell to her belly button with green eyes that sparkled like jade gemstones when she looked into the sun. She despised her thick bushy eyebrows with a creeped up unibrow, dumbo-like ears, her Nigel Thornberry shaped nose, the long dark brown hairs that lived on her arms and legs and the pimples that covered her cheeks, forehead and places where the sun didn’t- and shouldn’t shine. She religiously put on star-shaped mighty patches on her whitehead pimples and stared at her stomach that hung over her jeans. She tugged on her stomach with a fist full of fat and turned around to see her cellulite on her hamstrings. Then turned back around to see the cellulite on her inner thighs. She called the dark stretch marks snakes as she slapped coconut oil on them three times a day. She’s beautiful. Why couldn’t she see what I saw?
“Stop critiquing. Love yourself. It’s that simple” I tell her.
“I just want to be as thin as those girls in school. I want clear skin that glows in the sun. Soft, silky, hair with barely any split ends. I want boys to like me. And no hair all over my arms and legs. I want to feel my skin smooth. I’m tired of being teased. I want to be beautiful. I want to feel beautiful” she said as she looked down at her feet.
I watched her.
“When you start loving yourself, your body will reciprocate that love. When you hate it, it’ll show. Practice giving yourself compliments every day. And every day will be something new you love about yourself. Lift your head up, shift your crown straight, change your attitude and show the world the beautiful soul you have.”
I smile as I close the bathroom mirror.
