This is for creative therapy catalyst twenty-seven: tell us about a painful memory.

Journaling Reads:

This one is really painful. Maybe my most painful memory ever.

Years ago, I was fourteen, or maybe a little younger. In the summer, we lived on this island and there were two groups of kids my age. The group I belonged to and the other one. One day, we were upstairs in the club house and the guy from my group was talking to a guy from the other group and he said, “Well the only ugly girl in our group is Karen. All the girls in your group are ugly.”

That’s it. That’s all it is. That tiny moment that the guy probably doesn’t even remember. I’m sure he doesn’t remember. Why would he? It was nothing to him. A few cruel words. Maybe not even cruel to him. Maybe it was his honest opinion. He didn’t know I was there. He wasn’t trying to hurt me.

But it did.

I was there. I heard it. It broke me. Permanently. Twenty years later, I still feel like the ugliest girl. The only ugly girl in a group. In every group. I look at myself and I am incapable of seeing anything else. It’s the reason I’m always the girl who’s behind the camera and not in front of it. It’s the reason I don’t dance. It scarred me then. It scars me now. Just writing this down brings tears to my eyes, all these years later.

It’s amazing how a teeny tiny moment has completely changed my life. My personality. My self-confidence. The way I look at myself. The way I carry myself. The way I think of myself. The way I see myself. Looking at it now, it seems silly that I should have let it ruin how I see myself. But I don’t know how to stop it. I don’t know how to actually let it go. It’s such a core part of who I am. It has become a fact such a long time ago that I don’t know how to relearn. How to reform my opinions of myself. It’s like redefining who I am.

It’s amazing how an ephemeral moment can leave such permanent scars.