I Was Born This Way!

This article has been submitted by Spoorti Sanamannavar for the CLATGyan Blog Post Writing Competition. If you think this article is a good read, ‘Like’ this article on Facebook (the button is at the bottom of this piece) or post a comment using the ‘comments’ section below.

The worst nightmare of a teenager’s life is when someone disapproves of his/her looks. As a girl/boy enters their teenage hood they are all ready to have crushes, fall in love, and most importantly look amazing! But not all of them are blessed with those perfect looks. Some of them end up having huge pimples, facial hair, dark complexion, fatness etc, who end up getting bullied by the so called perfect kids of the school. I have been through this situation in my school days, and no matter how embarrassing it seems I don’t mind sharing it.

I was not in co-ed school, I was never conscious about my looks – not until I entered my teenage. I had facial hair. This clearly made me look ugly. The worst part was when people started to notice it. Many started keeping names like “Mucchi” or “Daddi” and many other things. Whenever I passed by a bunch of boy’s, they commented “Look at her she has a moustache.” And used to laugh finding it amusing, in what sense I never really understood. It really used to hurt me so much. I used to look at myself in the mirror and cry and curse God because he made me so ugly. I didn’t even know those people who used to make fun of me. All they did was laugh on my face, called me by different names never realizing what I went through. I used to cry all night thinking no guy is ever going to like me and I’ll be laughed upon throughout my life. Some dudes left notes in the tuition which had a drawing of a girl with lots of hair on her face and wrote some advice saying try using Gillette or please do us a favor and shave your face. For all those people what seemed like a joke ruined my entire teenage. I always wanted to yell at them “I never choose to look like this!!”

I was disturbed mentally. I hated going to school or to tuition. I was always scared to walk across a road full of boys. I lost all the confidence I had in me. My teachers used to complain to my parents that “your daughter is always crying in the school. She is always disturbed.” My parents never really realized what I was going through, because to them I was their darling beautiful daughter. So they kept asking why I was behaving in such a weird manner. My grades had dropped low. I had stopped looking at any object that reflected my image. I hated my face. I never had the guts to talk to a boy. I feared I’ll be laughed upon. I was just 15 then and I felt like ending my life. That’s how depressed I was. I was too scared to share it with my mom or my sister. I was scared they would never understand. At the time when I was supposed to enjoy play with friends, hang out; go to movies etc, I used to be locked up in my room crying out loud. My whole teenage was ruined.

This was the worst phase of my life. Now, I was 16 and obviously I had crushes. And the feeling of being rejected by your crush because you look ugly is pathetic. It becomes worse when the boy starts to spoil your name and makes fun of you on the road. As I mentioned, I wasn’t from a co-ed school. I would also like to mention that a boy’s school was right opposite to my school. And yeah your guess is right, that boy I had a crush on was from that school. That boy made my life miserable. The whole school then got to know who I was. Before it used to be a few people who made fun of me, slowly it became many. The thought of walking past the road between both the schools made me feel sick! Everyone and anyone who saw me made fun of my looks. They laughed at me, teased me and hated me. And I don’t think I had done anything wrong to any of them. I was shattered, broken and my whole world had fallen apart. There came a time when I actually got the thought to suicide. I was all prepared for it. I had a knife in my hand and I was crying in the bathroom. But something in my mind stopped me to do that. I went near the mirror looked at my reflection. I told myself “yeah I look different, so what if I look ugly I shouldn’t forget that I don’t have to be beautiful from the outside to be loved by someone. All the people who make fun of me don’t have a heart because if they did, they would never make fun of me. I am not going to be foolish and give up my life because I look ugly. Instead I’m going to study hard be a great person in life and when those people will have nothing I will look down upon them and laugh. I will have my time too.”

I stopped thinking about others after that. Soon after I passed out of school, people forgot about that. And this nightmare became nothing but a scary memory. The reason why I told this story is to make all those bullies out there feel bad about how laughing on others imperfection can ruin their lives. Well I was wise enough not to end my life. But there are many who have done it. If not end their life, they still feel unwanted and rejected in the society. Do looks really matter so much? Why can’t you people just grow up and stop making fun of other people’s imperfections? It must be very funny to you guys but it can spoil a person’s childhood or maybe their whole life. So all I ask is one thing – whenever you look at a girl or a boy and you feel he or she is ugly before commenting or laughing at them remember one thing everyone is beautiful in their own way and judging anyone on their looks or making fun of them won’t make them any worse but it will surely make your heart ugly!