I Used to Be Pretty

I used to be pretty. I'm not anymore, and I haven't been in so long. I'm not pretty on the inside and I'm not pretty on the outside. When I was young I had a wide smile and a white teeth - when I was young I loved my Mommy and my Daddy and I didn't need too much to keep me happy. My parents were complimented constantly on the beautiful, porcelain veneer of my skin; praised for the fact that they combined their genes just right to give me the beautiful shade of blond hair that curled just past my ears, the perfectly arrogant slope of my tiny nose, the high, firm shape of my eyebrows - I grew up with people telling me I was beautiful, so what was I going to think?

I thought I was beautiful.

Every night, Mommy would read me Rapunzel. The beautiful girl locked away with nothing to do but grow grow grow her hair - her beautiful hair. Mommy said that even though I was a boy, I was more beautiful than Rapunzel. She said that my hair was blonder, brighter, shinier - and I believed everything Mommy said.

I thought I was beautiful on the inside, too - but then my head started to hurt. Mommy would lay a damp washcloth over my precious forehead and smooth my golden locks back, asking where does it hurt, my beautiful baby boy, where does it hurt?

Here, Mommy, I would say. Here. It was always the same spot, the left side of my head, just above my temples.

Mommy would look at Daddy, Daddy would look at me, and I would close my eyes to the bright white spots that I saw.

I was only a child. I was only a child when they found the cancer. Not the cancer – the imperfection. I was only a child when they found my only imperfection. I was only a child, just a beautiful child, when they said the spot in my head would kill me.

I was still only a child when my hair started to fall out.

My beautiful golden hair. I wasn't Rapunzel anymore. Not to Mommy, not to myself. I can't tell you when my parents started to hate me for being ugly - for being bald and ugly and bloated - but I can tell you that it happened. They stopped getting complimented on my beauty and but I stared in the mirror more than ever now, tilting my chin and touching the cancer through my skin, trying to find the beauty in me. I tried so hard to find beauty in me - for Mommy, for Daddy - but most of all for myself.

I was nothing without the beauty. I am nothing without the beauty. Every night instead of hearing Rapunzel call out to her prince and Mommy kissing me as she turns the light out, I lay alone and wishwishwish with all my might that the cancer kills me. I don't want to live ugly. I don't want to die ugly, either.

I want to be pretty again. I used to be.