Day Eighteen

A picture of my biggest insecurity:

Hello...handsome?

Taking a picture of an insecurity is a ludicrous notion, the pragmatist in me wants to protest.  I'm sure as shit not taking a picture of the 25 lbs. I want to lose - if I felt comfortable doing that, it wouldn't be much of an insecurity.  In any case, that's not my biggest.

Here it is, folks: I don't think women find me attractive.  I know some women have; some women have been effusive in their compliments. I've stopped explaining to myself why none of them count.  I even find myself physically attractive - finally - but the certainty remains that women don't.  Irrational, I suppose, but how many people's biggest insecurities are rational?

I was bullied for years, growing up - and my ugliness was the thing people liked to call out the most.  I had a pig nose, ugly ears, wrinkly dry skin (thanks eczema!), buck teeth, a head two sizes too big for my scrawny and short body - the list goes on.  And even when the bullying stopped, as my peers grew in maturity and kindness - and as I learned to stop flipping the world off all the time and actually made a few more friends - the simple fact remained: girls didn't like me.  Today, I couldn't tell you all of the reasons that was; back then, I just knew it was because I didn't look like Jake.

(It's a tough thing, when one of your friends growing up is a feminine ideal, the most popular kid in class; it's easier when he goes on to be a really successful actor and one of People's 50 Most More-Attractive-Than-You.  It's sort of like saying, "It's okay, Dash - nobody could compete with that.")

I've never truly shaken this core belief; it's the biggest part of what lies at the root of my social awkwardness, part of why I still feel nearly phobic about approaching women I don't know or asking out the ones I do.  It's part of what needs to change before I find that Right Woman.