Imperfections

I am like the pearls in the photo above. I am perfectly imperfect.  Cultured pearls should not be even and smooth and identical.  Their surface texture is grainy and have slight scarring and irregularities in the layers of nacre.  The pearls are beautiful to look at but they are not perfect.

I am using the pearl analogy to convince myself that although I do not have classic good looks , there may be beauty to be found in my imperfections.  I am the opposite of everything that the western World deems to be beautiful.  It is a constant battle to look 'normal' let alone as a beauty! Given a choice though, I would rather be healthy than beautiful but recently even my health has been letting me down.  With the resolve to get myself checked over this year and to be able to feel and look good I have been to the GP, dentist, hairdresser and more recently to the opticians.

My eyes have not been tested for 4 years so after visiting the rather dour optometrist, was advised that I needed a new glasses prescription.  A chirpy young woman guided me around the various ranges of glasses showing me the two for one offers and their budget ranges.  I said that I would rather come back another day with my son and get his opinion on what suited me but I lingered thinking I might as well get it sorted there and then rather than coming back later in the week. I spent a bit of time looking around and then another helpful assistant came over to me. 

Even though I have to wear glasses most of the time (except for close work) glasses do not really suit me.  Saying that, I now have a 'glasses face' in which I look strange when I am not wearing any!  I have got to know the type of shape that looks better on me over the years but was somehow convinced to try on some metallic lavender coloured frames with delicate embossing on the arms.  After a short consultation and fitting, I paid up and was told to come back and collect in two weeks time.

Yesterday the two weeks was up.  I saw a lovely new recruit (she had just started that morning) who asked me to sit and wait in a booth whilst she fetched over my new glasses.  'Put them on.  What do you think?'  Well I think I was as surprised as she was when I said ' I look ugly. They do nothing for me.  What on earth was I thinking buying them?'  She was so apologetic when she saw that I was about to burst into tears and said that they would change them for another pair.  Luckily she knew exactly what I meant about feeling ugly in the glasses.  The lens area was much larger than I was used to and highlighted the dark, purple shadows and wrinkly skin under my eyes and the pinkness to the frame made my heightened colour look ever pinker.  I settled on some glasses similar to my original ones albeit an inferior quality.  I did ask if they could just change the glass in my current spectacles but they said that they wouldn't be held responsible if they broke them whilst doing so.

Going back four paragraphs, I briefly mentioned my trip to the hairdressers.  Let's just say that the young man washing my hair said that he had never washed long hair before and didn't know how to wrap it in towel.  He didn't know how to give a head massage either and squeezed my temples so hard that it brought on a migraine later that day.  Today I read on twitter that the salon had been awarded best salon in London. 

It is hard work trying to be 'beautiful'.  Even after all this 'work' I still look like I have been pulled through a hedge backwards.