"Thank you, Hannah," miss Jennifer called me next, "Alina, it's your turn now," she looked at me with that warm smile of hers that had always comforted me, I walked to the front of the class. The class went silent." So, Alina, what topic did you write about today?", I didn't reply to her. She looked at me for a few moments and then said "Ok, Alina, good luck." I read the title of my essay, and looked at the class, they seemed more interested than ever. I took a deep breath and started reading,
I had skipped the title:
Once there was an ugly duckling. He was so different from his brothers and sisters, he often looked at his reflection in the lake water and pondered"I don't fit in here", They all made fun of him, until one day, he decided to leave them. He went into the woods in the search of a new family but no one accepted him. Years went by and one day when he again saw his reflection while passing by a lake, he was astonished by what he saw, he had turned into a handsome young swan, he was ugly no more.....
We have all been told this story during our childhood, I was too, but I was never allowed to believe that a duck can actually turn into a swan, but..God... I know how badly I wanted to believe in that.... that I can also turn into a barbie or a princess when I grow up one day...
I continued after a pause.
'I AM A GHOST', I'm not saying that because of the way I look,but because of the way people look whenever they see me...as if they've seen a ghost. I've never really cared about the way I look, I had always considered myself like any other human being... you might think that's funny, but it wasn't funny or queer to me at all...so, where did I get this kind of confidence that I allowed me to live my life like a normal person ?...from the woman that gave birth to this ugly duckling, my mother.
I'm born with this disease known as "ichthyosis", which is a skin disorder and according to a survey, only one child out of 1 million, gets this disease. It is not contagious although many people pretend it is. My skin is dried up like the cortex of bark, with yellowish scales all over it...but that didn't affect my brain, in fact, I was a really smart kid from the beginning..so my mother let me enter a normal school because she believed that I could do as great as any other bright kid at the school, but obviously, that must have required some really special training, she had to teach me how to adapt myself in this world, be oblivious to how others behave towards me and just live my life to the full, do everything I want, enclose myself in a shell impervious to the special treatment that I will receive and just ignore everything about myself that might seem different from others and to tell myself this, whenver i was felling down ,that I AM BEAUTIFUL. She really did a good job.
That was the title...
As I said earlier, she never let me believe in fairytales, an ugly duckling turning into a handsome swan, a beast turning into a prince, or a princess coming to life by a kiss...but she did want me to believe that I am a beatiful young lady... just the way I am, she never taught me to hide myself, she taught me to live life blindly and just not to give a damn, as result of which I grew up to be a really confident child, an extrovert, I took part in almost everything and made many friends despite my appearance, I was a bright student, and all the teachers really admired me, I had a competitive nature and mostly won. As long as I had my mom with me, my life was so ideal...that was until when my mother died, just before I entered high school,
I could feel tears stinging my eyes,
I was feeling down, I was bullied a big-time, I stopped talking to people or making friends, I felt my shell breaking, I have had never been so affected by how others see me because I had no one to tell me that I'm pretty enough to live my life like a princess, so I started reminding myself what my mom always told me about beauty, and I will continue to remind myself that for the rest of myself because I want to live the life my mom wanted me to live, so I'm not writing this today for my mom, but for myself,
'so what is beauty?... Well, beauty is something much more than having blue eyes and blonde hair, beauty is something that attracts people towards you and there can be a million ways to do that other than having a pretty face, beauty is showing confidence in yourself, and believing that you can fly without wings, beauty in turning your ideas into creations, beauty is staying humble towards others, beauty means believing you are beautiful even if you are born like me...
I looked up from the paper, everyone was looking at me with a respect that I haven't felt in a long time, I was happy, I felt like I had got a part of my long lost confidence back. I was an ugly duckling who was going to stay an ugly duckling forever but still very pretty. I was returning to my seat when I felt a kind hand on my shoulder, I turned back and before I could realize anything, miss Jennifer was hugging me, and the class gradually started clapping for me, and at that time I couldn't hold my tears back anymore.
