Being attractive has made me self conscious

I was not the prettiest child. My nose was always bigger than my face, and I had a thick, dark unibrow until I was twelve. I got called a bird more times than I would care to admit. My parents split up when I was four, got back together when I was eight, and split up again when I was eleven. My mom left us for good that time, and I have only talked to her a couple of times since to say hi to my younger half brothers.

Her leaving after my eleventh birthday was the hardest thing for me to deal with starting out my teens. Getting my period, boys, makeup, learning about sex and consent, all alone with just the internet. My dad was a manly man and my younger sister that lived with me looked up to me and copied everything I did. I craved the attention that I was missing without a mom in the picture. I dreamed of having boobs so people would look at me because I saw the attention pretty boobs got. I wanted someone to think I was so beautiful that they got lost in my eyes like in the movies.

I thought people only loved you if you were beautiful, due to how crazy my mom always acted about how she looked when she lived with us. It was the most important thing to her, and that was especially affirmed when she left us. Constant mirror checking, clothes changing, weight obsessing, long makeup routines and many fights with my dad about looking good enough to go outside around people. Yeah, not healthy.

And then it happened. I grew boobs, very nice ones, and a very nice butt. As a soccer player, I was in great shape, and I starting turning heads when I was twelve years old and shaved off my unibrow because nobody in my house knew how to use tweezers. At first, I loved the attention. I started wearing low cut tops where my bra peeked out, short shorts, and I started acting overly sexy for attention. Adults talked to me multiple times about enticing boys. After a few years of scandalous teen behavior, I started to feel like people only cared about my looks and not my personality. I didn't want to turn heads. I wanted to make people laugh, and help people. I wanted deep connections with people, but I intimidated men, and made girls jealous. I didn't have friends, and my boyfriend at the time was obsessed with porn which made me feel worse.

I stopped wearing makeup, wore baggier clothes, became depressed and finished my last two years of high school online, and created a stupid hunch in my back from anxious slouching that I am still having skeletal problems with to this day. I got what I wanted though. People stopped paying attention to me for the most part, and eventually I convinced my mind that it really was true that nobody loved or cared about me because I was no longer receiving sexual attention, or any attention really. It led to years of being self conscious about my place in this world, and still to this day I mostly dislike being beautiful and I struggle to overcome the feeling that I am only wanted as something for people to look at.

One day, I hope to be comfortable with myself, but I want society to love my personality first. I want to accept my beauty, but damn it is hard when people treat you differently depending on what you wear and how your makeup looks. Let me know in the comments if you have struggled with being pretty, and how it has affected your life.