Good Enough

I’ve always been attractive.

Not pretty, not stunning, not gorgeous.

Attractive.

I first noticed it in year seven when Feisal Withers asked me out.

At that time, I was not popular. I had a small group of friends, and I had thought that was good enough for me. I thought that they could starve the loneliness away.

I had said yes, of course. Feisal was popular, and good looking, even if his personality was somewhere in the minus realms. Personality did not matter, not then.

My attractiveness didn’t really hit home though. Not after Feisal asked me out, nor after the myriad other boys who followed him. Not when I felt secure enough about myself to turn down hot, popular boys.

Not even when Jack Whitfield, god of our year came to me in supplication with love offerings, did I really, truly, honest-to-Godly realise that I was attractive.

It took his eyes roaming over me, drinking me everything, to show me what I really was.



Anyone can be pretty, with enough hard work. Anyone can be stunning. Anyone can be gorgeous. These things are only skin deep.

But attractiveness comes from the bone and reaches out, and it can’t be bought or acquired.

One has to be born attractive, and I most definitely was.



Of course that didn’t mean much to me in early life when I was covering every available surface in crayon, or when I was making sandcastles or rolling around in dungarees and mud.

It didn’t matter to the bookish girl I was in year six, who couldn’t relate to other people or play football to save her life and so was eschewed by primary school royalty.

But it mattered to me in year seven when Feisal Withers dumped me, and I was just a nerd again who’d found that four friends could not keep the cold tendrils of loneliness from a heart.

It mattered to me when I decided I needed to change myself.

I was attractive. Many girls became amazing with a worse base then that.

All I needed was pretty. Stunning. Gorgeous.

All I needed were the simple things.

All I need was motivation.

I found my motivation in hate.