The Forgotten Girl

When I was a kid I was the dorkiest little girl you ever saw. I was skinny as a rail and wore glasses that were too large for my face. Even worse, my left eye's vision was so poor that the lens in my glasses magnified my eye to the extent that people readily noticed my left eye looked larger than my right eye. I very rarely had my own clothes to wear and mostly ran around in things my 4 older sisters had handed down to me. Needless to say, I was never wearing the latest fashion in anything. To make matters worse, I was one of the biggest tomboys you ever met. That meant that my hair was usually an unkempt mess and my outfit was chosen for comfort rather than any sense of style or fashion. As I said, I was the dorkiest little girl you ever saw. I had nothing going for me and I was regularly made fun of for my appearance. I was an introvert to the max as a child. I preferred reading a book alone to playing with any of my friends, and that served me well in ignoring the fact that I was not one of the cool kids. The honest truth is that my books were always far kinder to me than the reality I lived in and I never had to worry about how "ugly" or unwanted I was when I was reading. Sadly, though, I am realist, and I always knew what I appeared like to others. I knew I wasn't pretty or nice to look at. I knew I wasn't popular.
 I gave you all that background to say this, today I realized something about myself that shocked me. I still see myself as that dorky, unattractive little girl. Twenty years have passed since I was that girl, but I have never shaken that identity. It's become a part of me, embedded in the deepest layers of my identity. Sure, I've changed a lot, particularly in the past 4 years, but deep down, in the part of me that no one sees, I am still her. I'm still wearing shabby clothes and glasses that don't fit and my hair is still a mess. I'm still ugly, still unlovable, still the dorkiest girl you'll ever meet. I'm amazed that I never realized before that girl was still alive and well inside of me, and still very much a part of me. Her presence motivates me to act in certain ways and believe certain things about myself. Who I am today is very much tied to who she was. I still prefer to be alone than to be with people, believing that others really don't want to be around me. I still feel awkward and funny looking to others. I'm still not comfortable in my own skin.
 While there are many things that have changed about me and I have grown up and grown out of so many bad habits and bad ideologies, I can't help but wonder how it is this girl has managed to stay here in my subconscious, influencing me in ways I never imagined. She affects my self-image, she influences the way I relate to my husband, she helps determine my attitude about how I take care of myself, and she is constantly whispering in my ear what others are thinking about me. How did this happen? Why is she still here? I ask these questions, and yet I know the answer. Early life experiences are important. They help shape who you become and how you view yourself. If those early experiences are bad and they are never addressed, they hang around, crouching in the shadows of your ever growing experiences, continuing to influence you until they are properly taken care of. I know this, but I never realized what it meant for me. I'm not sure why this realization happened today. Sometimes things just hit me at random moments. All I know it that suddenly, sitting at my desk, I saw a picture of myself staring into a mirror and the reflection gazing back was that little girl from so long ago. The pain that twinges in my chest tells me the picture is true; that is the reality of how I see myself. This forgotten girl from so many years ago has never really gone away. She has merely slipped into the shadows of my mind, where her influence is hidden but never nonexistent.