Being accepted in the cool club isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. Some people don’t fit in because of the way the look, or their ethnicity, or their color, or their height, or their financial situation, or their weight. My problem was weight….
People don’t know how hard it is to lose weight. People have an intellectual understanding but unless you’ve had to lose significant weight, it’s merely a mental exercise for you. It’s difficult to go through life feeling invisible. That is how you feel when you’re heavy. Many people don’t even feel that you deserve common courtesy when they don’t find you attractive. I remember going to the market and watching a pretty checkout lady put on a huge smile toward the people in line in front of me. Especially the guys she found attractive. Then it was my turn at the register…
Now, just so you know, I’m a friendly guy by nature and most people that know me, tell me that they really like me. I treat everyone the same. It doesn’t matter if I think you’re attractive or not, you’re a human being, and that’s enough for me to treat you with love and respect.
Unfortunately for me, this young lady didn’t share the same love of humanity that I do. To her, I apparently didn’t even warrant eye contact, or being handed my change without noticeable contempt.
A part of me wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she was thinking about something else and was angry at that. I looked back and noticed that the same smile had returned just in time to greet everyone else. This isn’t an isolated incident. It happened several times to me. I also started to notice it happen to other people that didn’t fit the “Acceptable human” mold. We have as a society picked a small group of people to look up to. It’s a great trick that’s played on the vast majority of people. We are all kept in a “Not good enough” mode, and to fix that, we must reject everyone that isn’t “Perfect” (As if that exists), or who’s different. We must buy this, have surgery on that, drive this or wear that… and if we don’t, we are not worthy.
Well, some time has passed and I no longer have a “Looks weird” problem, but I still feel like that person inside. I know I’m not the only one. Even though the shell is vastly improved, the damage of a young life spent dealing with cruelty, rejection and feeling like I didn’t measure up is still there, although it’s rapidly disappearing. I want to say to you, if this is how you feel, take it from me, it gets better. It virtually always gets better. I’ve learned to love me. As soon as you do that, the whole world slowly opens up and you find that you have abilities that you weren’t even aware of. And you learn that you can do and be something amazing.
I’m working hard to become amazing. You should too.
S.
S. Anthony Says... 