It's Nice Growing Up Ugly

Well, not like super ugly but definitely not a hot girl.

I was a cute kid until I hit puberty. The weight gain and acne did not compliment my jacked up teeth. Oh and don't forget about the glasses which came in high school. My mom always nagged me about it, and honestly as a 12 year old I'm not gonna be like, hey I'm going to run out and get some braces and see the dermatologist, brb. I guess I don't blame her that she didn't help me with these things, but I do blame her for being so critical of my looks when she did nothing to help.

Today though I realize how it's actually a blessing to grow up ugly. I was never the popular hot girl in school, showered by gifts and favors and attention. I actually had to develop an interesting personality to get friends and any potential interest from boys. I say this because I recently I noticed that a lot of attractive women I meet are either a. relatively boring or b. some variation of a gold digger. Since I never had looks to rely on, I had to rely on being beautiful inside (barf).

I also learned relationships the hard way - throwing myself at the first guy who showed romantic (or in the pants) interest in me. Luckily because I was basically already a 30 year old women inside when I was actually 17, our physical relationship never went that far. As a result he ended things with me shortly after saying no for the Nth time. From then on I struggled for a while to look for a balance in relationships, and I am lucky enough to have finally found someone as an actual (almost) 30 year old woman.

Obviously I am not just a result of my looks. I also grew up without my parents around much, so other than helping me register for elementary school I looked and applied for my own junior high, high school and university (even though it was probably super easy anyway). If my parents had the money I am sure they would have paid for my university, but they did not so I took out a student loan.

I started my change late in high school / first year university when I started to wear eye liner and contacts. I had money for that probably from my math tutoring job. Makeup helped make me feel much better about my terrible skin, so I went crazy for a while looking at Michelle Phan's youtube videos.

After university I moved to Hong Kong and became a workaholic for years. Without looks you just gotta hustle. When you are used to hustling, you keep hustling even when you start getting better looking. It just becomes a part of you.

The hustling came to a pause when I started to get bald patches in my hair. That was my warning sign to start taking care of myself. I went on my first trip to Europe, started to eat much healthier, went to Muay Thai classes, went to massages weekly, and last but not least I finally went to get Invisalign.

It took about a year or two, and after living like that for 2 years I finally started to feel great about myself entirely - inside and outside. Well, I've gained quite a bit of weight since I moved to Calgary. 

There was an article somewhere about some celebrity who is refusing to wear makeup, and then people in the comments started cheering for her and saying how women shouldn't feel like they need to look a certain way to feel beautiful. My thoughts? Well just let each individual woman do what they want to do and feel. Things are always easier said than done, and you saying to a woman that they shouldn't wear makeup to feel beautiful just makes them feel worse.

As for myself, I feel much more confident after my Invisaligns, and it actually is more of a way to tell myself I made it and that I can finally afford to do something for myself which most other people take for granted. How many kids do you know appreciate their parents taking the time and money to get them braces? My parents didn't do it for me, but I, myself, made money on my own and got them for myself.

If you are someone younger or someone struggling and am reading this, I just hope you can focus on how you made it through with not much support or resources rather than the fact that things suck or are still sucking for you. The process/journey isn't the best, but it feels so much better making it through on your own rather than someone else's help.

Ctrl-A, Delete.

This blog began back in July 2008. At that time I was very into makeup and wanted to share all the makeup tips and tricks I found through Youtube here. Around September of 2008 I moved to Hong Kong and this blog started shifting gears to mostly rants (hence the subtitle of the blog). It's been almost a year since I last posted, and a lot has happened since then. Due to the nature of my new job I talk to a lot of young people and notice myself reflecting back to earlier years of my life a lot. I guess I have been wanting to start blogging again so I can have an online reflective journal from the beginning, or at least as "beginning" as my memory allows me to go. I deleted all my posts from the past because I just could not reread any of them without feeling extremely stupid/ashamed. Most, if not all of my posts were just loud cries for attention and very negative.

In any case, all I want it to keep this blog as genuine as possible... and something to read back on when my memory no longer works as well as it does today.