I used to wouldn't go out of the house but at night, for fear of people seeing me in daylight. I lived in constant fear of being judged as unacceptable. That came from being viewed as a loser by the losers I went to school with. Then I got out of Alabama, got into the Southwest, and what do you know? I made friends. They didn't judge me, anymore or less than they judged one another. Then I moved to Alaska. Here, you are free to be as you want to be with no judgement placed on you. Everyone is so accepting of each other, helpful, and courteous. It has been during these past 2 years that I have literally dumped all the stuff that I carried with me all those years. I saw that no one could answer my questions for me. I had to do it myself. Everyone up here cautions me against a genioplasty (you don't need it, you're pretty enough). But what's pretty enough? I was talking to my rookie the other day, and she said,"The only reason you're doing this is because you want to be the prettiest girl on the block." I said, "No, I'm doing it for me, because I have wanted a chin since I was 12. If I wanted to be the hottest girl on the block, I'd make my Acups a C, trust me. And besides, there is always someone better looking to outshine me, and someone maybe who's less shiny than me. But through whose eyes? It's always changing. People's opinions change as fast as aging changes the faces they had the opinions about in the first place. So all that said, we do for ourselves whatever it is that will relieve the anxiety about how we feel. Not in a way of trying to create a false ego, but in a way that builds us up as people with character and strength. We dance, draw, paint, hike trails, run a 5k, invite friends over for book club...And at the end of the week, when I'm at my lowest and feeling ugly, unacceptable, I sit down with my breath, and see how it's always going in and out, over and over, and things change like this. So one week I'm up, then maybe next week I'm down, but that will change too. And this acceptance has made my life set free of the BDD, the OCD my poor brother still suffers from. We are each only as real as we choose to allow ourselves to be. I am an artist first, then a nurse. That's just how I'm trained and wired, genetically even. And I remember my accomplishments in these areas when I start to lose ground in how I feel about my appearance.
