Ugly Duckling Syndrome

I finished it. I had time to kill and I sat down with it and I like it! I hope you do too!

UDS


You are so hot! Is not something I hear very often. I heard it a lot as a kid followed by my mom telling me I was running a fever. I hear cute, a lot. You are so cute! Is annoying, because some woman is simultaneously pinching your cheeks; which by the way, I hate. Yes, they are chubby. Yes, its cute. No, they are not public property, don't touch me.

Cute, is also what a guy says when you're not 'pretty'. Thank God I'm a bitch because I'd hate to be nice. We all know what nice means. No one wants to say it out loud but 'nice' means - actually I don't want to be the to say it out loud either. It's like one step down from cute and cute isn't that much of an upgrade. It goes: nice, cute, pretty, hot and sexy I think is in it's own little category right because you can be cute and sexy. Then theres all the other rankings and combinations, but if I had to break it down into classes those would be mine.



Long story short I grew up cute with the mentality that I was nice, because no one ever said pretty and I only ever wanted to be pretty. Eventually, I stopped caring and decided it was easier to make friends if I wasn't trying to compete with pretty. Cute meant that pretty girls weren't intimidated so I was 'allowed' to be their friend and I could just hang out with the guys and it wasn't awkward so it was nice.

But then one day someone called me pretty so I laughed, and then he asked "why are you laughing?"

"You called me pretty" as if he was supposed to know that he's the only person in the world that thought that.

"No, seriously, you're beautiful."

I mean, beautiful, I think that's in it's own category too, right? Wow, all I ever wanted to be was pretty and he called me... that shattered my duckling constructs. I don't know how to be beautiful.

"You don't have to say that. I know I'm not the hottest color in the crayon box. I'm like a green. Not that dookie looking green. You see I don't sizzle I pop! I'm like, the green you pick up after you realize that neon is just too loud. I'm the kind of color you can settle down with. The background to the meadows you want to lie in. So, yeah, I guess thats beautiful in a cute kind of way"

I filled the awkward silence with "I feel like I just turned into a swan."

"Well then let me be your pond, because I want to be the soothing kind of blue that holds you. The kind of blue you can feel safe in," and then he kissed me.

Sure he broke my heart a few months later, and he broke it for neon. But thats fine he could never really turn me on. I want cerulean. That brilliant blue that fades into the horizon and makes green come when the sunsets. My green gutter mind knows you'll come when the sunsets. So screw blue, give me crimson blood red. That lustful passionate won't rest till I'm dead. I said that lustful passionate reason to live.

But that's all besides the point. Since I'm beautiful, when all I ever wanted to be was pretty.