I Am…

Dating sucks.

There are no Buts, Ifs, or Ors to that statement. The whole aspect, execution, and upkeep of dating just simply sucks.

Dating has always been harder for me than most of my peers. It’s been that way through high school, college, and now trudging forward into my 30’s.

It isn’t because I’m not “throwing myself out there”. Though I will admit I didn’t try during my high school years. I was more focused on trying to convince others that I was smart, when I should have been convincing myself. But that’s a different story for a different time.

Mostly, it’s because I didn’t fit into what boys were taught as “drop-dead gorgeous”: tall, thin, blonde hair, all while acting demure and complacent to the boy’s every whim.

I know what I look like. I see my body and face in the mirror every day. I’m what my father calls “pleasantly plump”, thick curly light brown hair that oftentimes has a mind of its own, and a loud, boisterous personality paired with a hard-earned book intelligence to tie it all together.

Now, before anyone yells at me and tells me I’m body-shaming all the women who are skinny, blonde, and tall, let me clarify: No, I’m not. I know a lot of women who are taller than me, skinnier than me, have soft demure voices, and are such wonderful soft souls that I can’t help but to gush over them.

I’m upset with the fact that boys are taught from such a young age that this type of woman is the only kind of beautiful out there. I can honestly tell you my heart hurts for all the women who don’t fit into this insanely tiny demography: pleasantly plump black women with thick curly black hair, teeny-tiny Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and so many other Asian women with “boyish” figures (which is a term I absolutely hate, btw), chubby English, French, Canadian, and so many predominately white-nation young women who just can’t seem to lose a single pound of fat for the life of them. Native American women with gorgeous thick long braids and swoon-worthy tan skin.

I hurt for them all, as well as myself. So many of us don’t fit into that Society-ordained “Beautiful” category, so we spend so many years hating our bodies and our looks, just to finally turn around and understand how to love ourselves for who we are. Problem is, not only should we have been loving who we are, and who we will become, right from the get-go, but we should also be better educating the males we grow up with.

We should be teaching them that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, just as a daisy dappled with dewdrops on a bright sunny morning, and the soft twinkling lights hanging from a thick Balsam Fir on a cold winter’s night, are both beautiful and awe-inspiring in their own rights.

All of us women should have the right to be told we are beautiful, wonderful, and smart. We all have the right to be told we are loved and wanted.

So, while I was in the shower, crying my little heart out at yet another rejection because, and I quote, “You’re not ‘Daisy Ridley’ pretty, so why are you even trying?”, I found myself chanting something that made the tears slowly dry up:

I am loved.

I am wanted.

I am worth it.

The words are right. There are so many people I know who love me for who I am, smart-mouth sass and all, who still want me in their lives, and see me as someone worth spending their time with. As long as I focus on those people, the jerks who don’t see my unique beauty don’t matter.

Yes, at the end of the day I’m still me. But I’m trying to see me in a better light. I’m pleasantly plump, not fat. I’m petite, not short. I speak my mind when I see a wrong, not bossy and annoying. I am intelligent, not an “insufferable know-it-all”. I am worth the time to get to know, whether it end up as friendship, or something more. I am worth it.

I hope and pray these words I recited to myself reach whoever needs to hear them, and all I ask is you help me spread them even farther to those who still do.