How To Be Ugly (and Be Okay)
I must have had other sources of self esteem [besides beauty] when I was a borderline overweight adolescent. Maybe it was tied to my skill at drawing and guitar, or my fishing level in RuneScape.
[Originally published on Blob’s Blog in October 2019.]
Last July [2019] I fell off a rock climbing wall and hurt my shoulder quite badly. It’s been more than 3 months, but I can still barely lift my left arm over my head, making it impossible to do anything but the most casual physical activity.
Apart from the physical challenge of not being able to lift or carry things, this wouldn’t be a huge issue. I’m lucky to have a job where the most strenuous part of my day is walking up three flights of stairs. But this injury poses, for me, a grave emotional danger. My ability to exercise is highly correlated with how I feel about my body on any given day, and “feeling beautiful” unfortunately accounts for a significant portion of my self-worth.
I wasn’t always this vain. Ask my siblings, and they’ll tell you of a very different Mo, who had not yet discovered exercise, overpriced clothes, or basic hygiene. As a child, I avoided bathing at all costs, preferring a roll in the mud over a dip in water. As a teen, I had severe acne, and wore whatever second-hand clothes my brother or friends had outgrown. In high school I grew my hair out past my shoulders, and refused to comb it out of some misbegotten sense of countercultural rebellion. When I finally let my dad near me with scissors, he had to cut the knots right off my head, because the hair was too thick and tangled to deal any other way.
As high school wore on, I started to get more self-conscious for all the normal reasons. I was lonely and depressed and desperately wanted girls to like me. (I learned later that some of them already liked me, knots-and-all, but my self-loathing was so intense that I was oblivious to the fact.) So changed my diet, losing about 30 pounds, even as I was still getting taller. I thrifted for clothes instead of passively accepting whatever hand-me-downs my parents scrounged up. At seventeen, I finally found a form of exercise that I didn’t hate in cross-country running.
I continued to “glow up” over the subsequent years, and the link between my self-worth and self-perception of attractiveness grew stronger over time. Ostensibly I was eating well and working out because I wanted to be healthy—and I did feel healthier—but I was never particularly concerned with how fast I could run, how much weight I could lift, or how capable I felt. The real reward for my efforts was in the mirror.
Since my injury I’ve watched my reflection fade from an image of respectable fitness to a comparatively shapeless blob. Faced with still more months of muscular atrophy as my shoulder heals, I’m trying to relearn other forms of self-love. It’s hard to remember, but I must have had other sources of self esteem when I was a borderline overweight adolescent. Maybe it was tied to my skill at drawing and guitar (or lack thereof), or my fishing level in RuneScape.
In the meantime, I’m trying to think less about my appearance, or at least care less about what I think. I haven’t had a haircut since my injury, haven’t shaved in about a month, and have stopped putting any effort into dressing well. In short, I’ve allowed myself to become uglier, and I’m working on being okay with that.
I’d like my self-worth to not be contingent on my appearance, or on anything else for that matter. Shouldn’t I love myself regardless of how beautiful, or creative, or good at virtual fishing I am? That would probably be “wise” thing, but I’m not sure how much I care to live a wise life. Maybe I want to hold onto this gnawing hunger, to push myself to continue improving.
It helps to have other people who love you, to carry you through the stretches when you don’t love yourself. I’m grateful for my family, who loved me despite the knots in my hair. For my friends, who invited me to play D&D with them back when my face was an archipelago of acne. For my girlfriend, who still tells me I’m beautiful, even now that my head is starting to look like a bird’s nest.
[Update from 2024: After many excruciating months of physical therapy my shoulder stopped hurting, which allowed me to regress to my prior state of unexamined vanity. Hooray!]