Finding my Pretty

Years ago, I mean YEARS ago, when I was in the blossom of my youth, I was a tad fashion obsessed, well as fashion obsessed as you could be living in the 1980's in a hick town without reality shows, internet and a store where you could buy both your underwear and your fishing tackle in the same aisle.

While most of the older town women shopped at the local Woolworths store for their yearly supply of the polyester/cotton blend wardrobe, I would every year save my money from my summer job and venture out by traveling the hour and half away with my mom each August to purchase my school outfits from the City I adored.

I felt glamorous in my teens and use to love to preen in front of my mirror and was ridiculously besotted with my once perky breasts and my wrinkle free skin.

A few years later, me, my school clothes, my perky breasts and my smooth baby face would move down to that City I adored and would instantly find out that I was anything but fashion forward.

It would be during this time that my thyroid would stop working and it would be many years before it would be discovered as such and I would spend the next 10 years packing on the poundage. My parents would go through an obscenely rough divorce that would see me eating my troubles away, I would earn a mere $6.67 per hour working for lawyers and be so poor, that I would spend the next several years walking to work with holes in my shoes, tears in my clothes and eating tuna and kraft dinner from the case lots sales at the local grocery store.

I would end up hanging out with other girls my age that were gorgeous and self assured and I would feel ashamed of my looks, and would view myself as the guppy among the starfish.

My confidence would be non-existent and I would spend another decade plus hiding under dark solid colours of clothing and feeling less than desirable and losing myself to that unspeakable nagging voice that kept reminding me that I was just a lump with eyeballs.

It would take up to a few years ago for me to realize that I was so much more than that. And even then, I would only allow myself to indulge in jewelry and purses to make my dowdy clothing seem a little more prettier.

And then this year, something happened that I can't explain.  I had a moment when I realized that I didn't want to go to Italy in my dowdy sturdy clothing.  I didn't want to blend in with the crowd.  I didn't want to be just another unrecognizable woman.  I wanted to be noticed. And as I stood in the clothing store, I felt this surge take over me and within minutes, I started to grab and buy everything that I could that was both feminine and beautiful.   

And then later that evening as I laid out all my new purchases on my bed, I did something completely absurd.  I took a running leap and jumped on my bed and laid among my new clothes, and it dawned on me at that moment, I was and had always been more than I realized, it just took me 20 plus years to figure it out.  

Thankfully, I was finally just finding my pretty.

Until Next Time.

Tracy