Dear Melisa,
If you don’t feel like wearing pants or leaving your bed all day….totally cool, girl. If you want to have short hair so you don’t have to comb it, fine. If you’re hesitant to do the whole eyeliner thing because you might end up looking like a panda, that’s valid. But if you decide you want to try to seem more attractive so someone will love you, validate you, want to be with you…then go get some fucking perspective. Remember that time you confessed how you felt for a boy in high school? Remember how, while sitting in his car, he said that you weren’t pretty enough to date. Which was a great thing because he wasn’t nice enough or interesting enough or ambitious or smart enough for that either. But it stuck in the back of your mind that to be desired and wanted you had to try to be a little more than you already were.
Remember that guy that said that he loved you? He seemed nice enough, and ambitious enough, and he was smart but he didn’t make you feel wanted. You would always make excuses as to why he couldn’t love you in actions, the way he loved you in words. And your mind always crept back to that night in that car with a guy who implied that pretty was the foundation for everything else. It was unhealthy. You started to think that if only you were prettier then this guy would value you the way he would value a girl he would be afraid to lose. A supermodel. An actress. A ridiculous good looking girl who every other guy would want as you strolled together down the street. You knew this was the wrong way to look at things, but he said that he loved you.
You still feel resentful for that switch in your brain that started thinking about being more physically desirable in order to be more fully loved. The facts are that he didn’t really love you, or didn’t know how to love you, and that being more attractive wouldn’t turn him into a different man.
So please remember to work on the qualities you think make you beautiful. Not the color of your skin, or the length of your hair, or the fit of your clothes but on the way you treat others, the thoughts that you entertain, the life that you yearn for, and the present that you create. Because the people who treat you the way that you deserve to be treated for the person that you are, they are the only ones who are really looking and are really seeing just how beautiful you are. So go out there and always remember to be pretty where it counts. In your guts. Your brain. Your brilliance. Your soul. And the imprint you leave in the lives of others.
Sincerely,
You.
Illustrated by Meli 