Because you were frustrated with your diet
and I was 15 pounds heavier than you wanted to be
while you were another 50 beyond that
And it was a bad day
You told me I was fat
and I believed you.
Because no one had ever told me anything different
I believed you so hard
that years later
I would scoff at men who called me beautiful
I would roll my eyes and stick out my tongue
because I thought they were mocking me
I was not beautiful.
How could I be
You told me I was fat.
I cried the day I remembered this
Asked by one of those wonderful men
Who had told me I was ugly?
It was you, Mom
How could you
I am thirty-two years old
and you’ve still never told me
I am beautiful.
Because we don’t do that
in our family
it is vain to talk of beauty
I’m smart, isn’t that enough?
But I AM beautiful
And not just because those men have told me so
And shown me so
I am Beautiful
because I don’t believe you anymore
I know I am beautiful
Inside and out
because beauty isn’t about what other people think
It’s about how I feel about myself
I Am Beautiful
and I hope you know that
You are, Too.
(Reposted from FetLife)
I remember a time my mother told me I looked like a whore in a miniskirt that I had just bought when shopping with my dad. I was 13. I’m 36 now, and I still haven’t let that go. I’m sure she doesn’t remember it and would probably deny it in horror if I called her on it now. Crazy how much our parents affect us, and how little they realize it. Makes me very introspective as a parent now. This poem is a beautiful examination of that.
Thank you. And yes, it’s amazing how one little comment, forgotten by the speaker the next day, can stick with us for so long.