I don't know exactly when I started to feel "wrong".
Maybe when a classmate told me my eyebrows were too strong. Or maybe when my mom, in her own well-meaning way, told me to straighten my hair to look more “neat.”
I was twelve years old and I remember standing in front of the mirror, pulling at my curls with my fingers and wishing they would straighten.
Since then, years have passed since I learned to slowly erase everything that made me "me".
I learned to pull my hair up tightly, fill my face with makeup, hide my skin tone under lighter shades. It was a time when beauty seemed to have a certain type, and I wasn't one of them.
As a teenager, I never went out without straightening my hair. In college, I learned to dye my hair like everyone else. In my first job, I felt like I had to look serious, presentable, and my mirror was always a battle.
Until that period came when everything seemed to fall apart. A difficult breakup and a feeling that I no longer knew who I was or how I wanted to look. Somewhere between obligations and fatigue, I started avoiding the mirror altogether.
I didn't want to see a face I didn't recognize.
One day, completely by chance, I passed by a small beauty salon in my neighborhood.
On the door it said "Eyebrows that tell your story". I smiled bitterly and went in. I had no plan. Maybe I just wanted to feel like I was doing something for myself.
Katerina, the beautician, greeted me with a look that didn't weigh me down, she just saw me.
As she asked me what I wanted to fix, I began to explain to her almost apologetically:
"You know, my eyebrows are too strong, my hair breaks, my skin isn't smooth..."
He stopped me, smiling.
"We'll make them to enhance your face, not change it."
I had never heard anyone say it to me like that before. And then, for the first time, I felt not shame but relief.
As Katerina worked on my eyebrows, we talked about life, about how we grew up with images that taught us to fit in, not stand out. When she was done, she turned me towards the mirror.
I was no one else. I was me.
Just calmer, brighter, as if something I had kept hidden for years was coming to the surface.
Since then, I stopped fighting my image. I left my hair curly, my eyebrows natural, my smile uncorrected. And every time they ask me "What did you do to change like that?", I answer:
"I just stopped pretending to be someone else."
Today, when I see girls on the street struggling with their "If I were different...", I want to tell them not to hide!
"Whatever you try to change is what makes you stand out. True beauty begins the moment you stop adapting."
And then, the mirror ceases to be an enemy and becomes an ally."
Friendly
M.L.
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