Rebuilding, then discarding, my mask.

I am writing this because I feel compelled to. My hope is that it will help someone who struggles with their self-esteem.

I wasn't really born into the world with the option of an intact sense of myself. For as long as I can remember, adults have felt uneasy around me, causing them to enjoy ridiculing me, and children, well, they're quite good at identifying the other.

It wasn't much different on the home front. I was prone to convulsions as a child, so my father had me marked on the face. Something about me being visited by demons, I am sure. I flinched when the native "doctor"'s blade approached my face, so the cut on one side of my face was larger than the other.

I was a much ligher-skinned child than my adulthood would suggest, so imagine the stark black marks on my face, and imagine being in a room full of children, ie, your classmates.

I was mocked for everything: that I couldn't see (before I got glasses), that I looked like a lizard (when I got glasses), for my lips, my scalp (I had a curiously difficult-to-cure case of the "laps"....you know, normal lapa-lapa nau).

I remember showing up on my first day at school wearing a hat and the teacher telling me, right before assembly, to take it off. I protested feebly—I was painfully shy—and she yanked it right off my head, grimaced and put it back.

"Okay, sorry, don't worry!"

And the entire assembly laughed.

I could go on, with less funny anecdata, but I hope the point was made: I entered my childhood, teens and early adulthood profoundly insecure about myself.

I made up for it by chasing intellectual competence, to be clear. There was something profoundly satisfying in that people could attempt to bully me all the live-long day, but when the exam results start coming in, their look of apprehension was deeply satisfying.

Competence, and a sharp wit. God does not leave the tailless cow without some unfair enhancements.

But enough revelations about myself. Here is how I rebuilt my mask, in a nutshell:

1. I became competent—like really competent. Competence helps you build a strong, defensible reputation with yourself. You know, deep down, you are—as the kids say—HIM. The more you meet people and realize how competent you are relative to the average person, your self-esteem grows.
2. I learned to dress based on how I felt inside, rather than following a style I saw somewhere. The reason, I suspect, dressing how I felt boosted my self-impression was that my mind felt more 'at home' in my body, and thus the self-scanning and fretting (self-consciousness, let's call it that) faded beautifully away.
3. I forced myself to get on camera and post to social media multiple times a day. This part still makes me uncomfortable, but I have gotten way more comfortable with the camera than I'd have anticipated.
4. I got in shape. Looking trim, incidentally, had no effect on my self-esteem, but the fact that I could will my body into a shape I wanted gave me unspeakable levels of endorphins. I am indeed master of my fate, captain of my soul.
5. I found that the more I appreciated beauty in the world, the more I appreciated beauty in myself. How can I express this clearer? I trained my mind to notice beauty in things I'd typically consider ordinary, and by so doing, found my company to be quite extraordinary.

Fascinatingly, after rebuilding my self-esteem, I no longer cared about being esteemed. I realize, now, that this body...this perception....is a mere interface with which I interact with the world. I have to make it polished enough to not be completely off-putting, but beyond that none of this matters.

I'm gorgeous.