I remember shaking, eyes wide open. The feeling of my family’s cold tile floor, tears flowing down my cheeks begging for a reason to be alive. I had hit my breaking point I struggled with low self-confidence for seven years. I hated mirrors, car windows anything that would show me my ‘big’ nose. Or so I was told from my peers. I still break into tears remembering the not so ingenious names this boy Taylor would call me every day since 3rd grade. It continuesd till we all went our separate ways for high school. Freshman year I was told something that has stuck with me more than the negative names once said to me. While walking I observed an old man sitting in front of a store asking for money, right as he asked a rather large man in an expensive suit for change the man stopped looked at him and said, “you’re the type of person that disgust me” the
man flinched in what I could only interpret as shame.
I had seen it all too much, and knew it all too well. None the less he looked the suit clad man in the eyes and said, “God bless you sir”. As soon as the suited man walked away chuckling I couldn’t stop the question that flowed from my mouth, “Can I buy you a drink sir?” Handing over a 10, this man looked at me with warm light brown eyes far to young looking for his wise looking face and said, “What sets you apart in this world is what makes you truly beautiful, god bless you child”. Now weather this man was on drugs or just crazy doesn’t matter not to me because when I walked away I replayed those words, felt the slightest breeze looked up and felt genuinely at peace with myself.
If we want to be truly irreplaceable we need to be a one of a kind, my nose no longer defines me but enhances that fact that I’m here, and I’ve never felt better.