little-curiosities - Tumblr blog

[little-curiosities]

it's ironic how I absolutely loathe how teachers play favourites with their students but still yearn to be a teacher's favourite student.

[little-curiosities]

"you're so pretty"

It's a small phrase. A phrase I've heard my whole life, from when I was a small kid all the way to my teenage years. And for all the way people love to hear this directed at them, I've come to have a love-hate relationship with it.

"You're pretty" is a glow of happiness when a classmate you're not close with whispers it to you after you help them with their makeup.

"You're pretty" is a small smile of happiness when a little girl at the grocery shop stage whispers it to you while you're paying for your things.

"You're pretty" is love when you text your online best friend of three years now a new poem you wrote and she says your handwriting is as pretty as your eyes.

"You're pretty" is love when your other online best friend texts it to you randomly at 4am in your area because she lives halfway across the world and you have a twelve-and-a-half-hour time difference and she saw cherry blossoms and thought of how your cheeks looked in your latest photos.

"You're pretty" is guilt when it's your best friend of your entire life says it in such a tone that it feels worse than any rude things she could've called you.

"You're pretty" is guilt when it's your best friend whispering it to you while looking at herself with a slow resignation.

"You're pretty" is disgust when you realise that your friend gets compared to you and mocked just because she's not a carbon copy of you.

"You're pretty" is disgust when you realise it's the only reason why you haven't been treated the same way.

"You're pretty" is hate when someone who you considered a friend says it like it's the only thing that matters about you.

"You're pretty" is hate when this is your nth number of times hearing it as the reason for someone's confession, just that nothing else.

"You're pretty" is insecurity when it's 10pm on a Friday night and your brain won't shut up about you aren't smart or creative.

"You're pretty" is insecurity when that's the only thing you can hold onto during the darkest of hours because you don't know what else you have.

"You're pretty" is shame when you are asked about your abilities but all you have ever felt confident in was your looks.

"You're pretty" is shame when someone who's supposed to be interested in your writing tells you how you don't have to be smart because you're so pretty.

It's always "You're pretty" is the most physical of sense, I can count on my hands the times I've felt pretty when I've been called pretty. And all of them came from my online friends who have never met me in person.

And isn't that the most pathetic thing of it all? That the only people capable of calling my soul pretty are the ones who have never once met it in person?