We All Deserve Love

My face is small, and my nose is too big. I push down hard on my nose, feel the bone protruding underneath and smush the skin further. I hope somehow that I can bend this bone, shape it into a mold of my own design. The bridge begins to ache, and I move on to my next assault. My fingers reach to my two front teeth. There are white spots on each front tooth. They stick out like a sore thumb, and they are white as ghosts. My fingernail scrapes over the teeth and I push hard with surmounting agony, just like my mom used to do before she realized they were permanent.

“I am so ugly.” I tell the reflection in the mirror. My eyes are brimming with unshed tears and tingling sensation spreads across my palms. I think to myself, ‘Who could ever love someone as ugly as me?’

The tears make streaks down my cheeks, but I am traditionally silent.

I always start my day the exact same way I end it, by staring at myself in the mirror and running my hands along the parts that disgust me. This is how it has been since the day my two front teeth arrived.

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I don’t exactly know how to continue this part. All I know is I want to talk about it. I want to write about it even.

That day.

It was summer break, and I was fifteen. The last day of freshman year, and a friend, Connor, asked for my number. I knew Conner had been working up the courage to tell me he had feelings for me. This might have excited someone if they felt the same way, but all I felt was dread. I didn’t want to have to be the person to reject him. I knew the feeling of rejection well, and I didn’t want the responsibility. He finally told me over text his true feelings for me, and I regretfully informed him they were not reciprocated. I feared his reaction and didn’t want to feel the guilt associated with it, so I stopped responding to his texts. This was not a mature reaction on my part, but mistakes are part of being human. So, that is how it went. I spent all summer ignoring his texts and hoping he would forget about my rejection.

The following school year, we ended up in the same Latin class. His desk was situated catty corner to me, but he would not talk to me. I did not mind his reaction. He was angry. He was allowed to be angry. Being ignored for the whole summer would make anyone upset. I had other friends and so did he. We did not interact anymore. Simple as that. As our previous friendship was mostly of classmate status, this was not of momentous importance.

About midway through the year, a group of friends and I were standing by the door. Backpacks strapped on, books in hand, and waiting for the bell to ring. We were making silly, unimportant jokes with each other. Friendly teasing about the way Lila pronounced the word ‘whale,’ imitations of Ron Weasley, and simple similar teenage comradery. I felt myself smiling, and, not embarrassed of it for once. One of Conner’s friends joined our circle by the door, and Connor lingered hesitantly in the gaggle. I made an innocent comment to one of my friends when Connor decided to converse with me for the first time. He used this opportunity to aggressively ask why I had “Those white spots on my teeth.”

I immediately stopped smiling, my cheeks boiled with blood, and my fingers slicked my backpack straps with sweat. My family always told me the spots were not as bad as I made them out to be, but now someone was asking me directly about them. I shook from embarrassment and shame, but I was the statue, Venus de Milo. I could see out of my peripheral vision that some of my classmates were looking on in horror. My eyes began to sting as I willed myself to not cry. My response was a shaky and stammered, “I – I – I don’t know. They came in this way. I’ve always had them.” As if by a dramatic, movie-themed fate, the bell rang. I rushed out the door with a fuzzy haze permeating my head. I thought I might be a released balloon filled with helium. The corridors seemed vaguely empty as I walked to the farthest bathroom and cried until the late bell rang for the next period.

On the bus that afternoon, someone from my Latin class told me “You should have asked him why he was so fat.” My response was a bout of anxious laughter and agreement. I knew people felt sorry for me, and this sent a punch of tension to my gut once again. Though, I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I never would have called him fat.

The following day, one of his friends apologized on his behalf and informed me that he was still grieving my rejection. I was stunned into the reality that my failure to reciprocate Connor’s feelings acted as his excuse to hurt me.

Years later, I am sobbing in a psychology clinic at my university while my therapist diagnoses me with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD). Body Dysmorphic Disorder is a mental health issue characterized by persistent thoughts that one or more features are flawed or defected. The disorder can lead someone to become so anxious, ashamed, or embarrassed that they avoid certain social situations and can affect their everyday life. Someone with BDD may groom or think about their appearance for hours on end. They may also be willing to be subject to repeated plastic surgeries to ‘fix’ their perceived flaw. This is how I spent the years eight to twenty. Agonizing over countless medically procedures to have my teeth and nose fixed. Believing my self-worth was tied to my appearance. Not smiling or laughing. Avoiding the gym or going out with friends because I truly felt disfigured. Throwing raging self-hatred at my reflection because of my appearance. I felt I was too ugly to be loveable. Now after years of therapy, when I stare at the reflection in the mirror, I still need to remind my thoughts to be kind. I still need to remind myself that my value is not based on my beauty. Whether or not I am beautiful, ugly, fat, skinny, rich, poor, does not matter. All that matters is that I am a person who is deserving of love. As all people are deserving of love, simply because they are human beings.