prettiness fades, beauty lasts

Everyone has their ‘peak,” physically speaking.

For some of us, it’s very early. Almost too early. Pedophiles and creepy older dudes hitting on us. Anyone, after all, who wants us when we are 10, 12, is either another stumbling ten year old or a creep. I wouldn’t know, I didn’t bloom until much later…but I saw it happen to other girls. I still do. And I worry for them. They can’t help being pretty, so young.

For some of us, it’s high school. I envied the pretty girls– at the time. The head cheerleaders and prom queens- and it wasn’t just the girls. The pretty boys, too. I remember them. I had a crush on one of them who must’ve spent 2+ hours a day at the gym (and in all honesty worked harder on his muscles than his mind, but still was wonderful eye candy.)

For some of us, it’s later in life. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

I remember my 10 year high school reunion.

I don’t even know why I went. I didn’t love high school. I didn’t have friends I longed to see, to reconnect. No particularly fond memories. But I went. Everyone sorted themselves into their usual cliques. Our old lunch table crowd regrouped, and we laughed about it. Slipping right back into old times, huh? But, damn if we hadn’t changed.

One of the girls caught my eye. Prettier than I recalled. She wasn’t the only one, either. The dynamic had shifted. The “plain” girls had blossomed– but what shocked me was the popular kids’ tranformations. How my old crush had changed! Balding, overweight– and we were only 28! How could we have changed so much? Had I changed so much, too? The other day, not at the reunion, I said hello to my friend’s sister, the hot girl in high school and prom queen. I barely recognized her.

We only get a short time to be pretty in life, and we don’t choose when it hits. It just happens.

I was one of the Ugly Ducklings, until, oh, at least college. Truthfully, I don’t think I really came into my own, physically, until about twenty eight. But I still had some guy compare me to Catherine Zeta Jones and we dated for three weeks. And nobody ever asked me out in high school. I was the nerdy, liberal weird one.

Ask me today, and I’ll tell you that I’m fortunate that mine hit me later in life. I say fortunate, because I had no say in the fact that I got pretty when I was old enough to appreciate it. When I could do something about it, besides date high school boys (I hadn’t yet gained the confidence to approach women).

Because it only lasts so long. I am looking forward to being called other things than “pretty,” because that isn’t something I want to be forever. I want to be much more than that. Beautiful, in fact.

Beauty, the way I see it, is something we grow into, unike prettiness which blesses (or curses) for a short time. Beauty lasts and deepens, as we grow and deepen ourselves.

Because there will always be someone younger, hotter, prettier– and that’s okay, because we all get our moment in the spotlight, and it’s okay to let ours go and let it be another’s turn. There will be someone prettier than me. Than any of us. We all go through that time in our lives, but it isn’t always OUR time. So it goes.

It’s okay, though. There is more to life, after all, than being pretty. Much, much more. Beauty is something that builds within us, until it shines out of us. A beautiful woman can share pictures of herself, far longer than the pretty former prom queen who loses confidence, until she is quite wise and gray haired.

Prettiness fades like a flower’s beauty.

My master says I am beautiful, and I know it is because he sees my inner beauty complementing my outer beauty (and, for now, my “prettiness.”)

When your prettiness has gone (and it will, because age happens to us all), what will you have left? Of course we all have the potential to have beauty beyond our most superficial qualities, but not all of us have the strength, or perhaps even the ability, to bring that forth so that everyone can see it. I’d rather be the Fascinating One than the Pretty One. Wouldn’t you?

Do you have a beautiful soul to keep yourself going? Then show it to the world.