Growing up, I can’t recall when I was ever content with how I looked. I didn’t like myself as a teenager and thought I was ugly because guys weren’t much interested in me. I had features that weren’t considered attractive in the 80s and 90s: freckles, a plethora of pimples and blackheads, and paper-white skin that wouldn’t tan—I never wore shorts or a bathing suit. Then, in my twenties, I looked back on photos of myself in my teens, and I thought, “How could I have not loved myself because I’d do anything to look like that now.”
This thought became repetitive throughout my life. Even in my twenties, with that realization, while looking back on my teens, I was still never happy with myself. I remember one ex-boyfriend told people he thought I had ugly feet, and I was self-conscious about my feet throughout young adulthood—I never wore flip-flips or open-toed anything. I was also in an abusive relationship with a man who often told me I was ugly, among much more vulgar words and phrases he used to describe me that I will not repeat here…
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