You Are Beautiful

Do you remember the first time someone told you you were beautiful? Because you are. And if no ones ever said it to you before I’m saying it to you now.  

Senior prom. That’s when the first person, that was not a relative, told me I was beautiful. We’ll call him John, which is not his real name. When I think about senior Prom, that I went to with two of my best friends, I remember the fun we had getting ready, taking pictures in Susie’s parent’s yard, going putt-putting in our Prom clothes & then eating at the best Italian restaurant (voted best romantic date night) in the city. Once we actually arrived at prom, in the overheated tiny space that had also been rented out for junior prom the year before, we danced with our friends and tried to look like we were having fun while also not being intimidated by the striking good looking popular kids that were actually doing the prom things seen in movies, drinking, having sex in limousines etc. My friends on the other hand were and are a bunch of choir, theater and band kids who absolutely weren’t going to be doing any of the before mentioned activities.  All of the actual time at prom is a blur except for one moment that stands apart from the chaos. One moment I even question sometimes if I made it up because it was so inconsistent with every other part of my high school and teenage experience. John, a handsome, smart, funny, cool, rich kid with a bright future and a great ass in his baseball uniform, my ultimate high school crush, in the middle of everything, said to me “You look beautiful” and time stood still. I would love, dear reader, to tell you that we danced, or secretly kissed, or better yet just left prom altogether and ran into the night to have some fun adventure where we stayed up all night laughing at each other’s jokes until we couldn’t breathe and then kissed as the sun was coming up. That one night could have been enough or it could have led to us dating all summer. We were about to graduate but there was time for a summer romance. If I turn my memory kaleidoscope the right way I can see how our friendship could be seen as a typical high school romantic comedy. We had several classes together and we talked more than I talked to most people and to his credit he always seemed interested in what I had to say. We were in drama together and although he was literally the lead in everything while I was a nameless background character, we had our moments. Like the time he asked me to help him with his stage makeup and ended up drooling on my hand and we both laughed. Or the time we left school to grab junior bacon cheeseburgers for everyone from Wendy’s before a performance in his Buick.   There are moments that I want to go back in time and shake my former self until I go for it. Ask him out. Maybe it would have been disastrous but maybe it wouldn’t have. Because even though to me he was the ideal Prom King, to a lot of others he was not. If high school had been Hollywood, he would be John Krasinski. Sexy but goofy, funny and kind but smart and driven. Most of the girl’s in our high school wanted to run towards the Charlie Hunnam’s and Channing Tatum’s, and I get it. I really do. But even at a young and immature age, I wanted more than sex. I wanted a happily ever after. But that didn’t happen. I didn’t ask him out. We didn’t make out in his car. We didn’t sneak into each other’s bedroom windows to spend the night together until the sun came up. But that’s ok. Because the reality was just as impactful. 

He told me I looked beautiful and in that moment that was enough. In that moment, I felt beautiful. So thank you John. Thank you for making me see myself as I should have seen myself all along. Thank you for your kindness. Thank you for the confidence. Thank you for the memory. Because sometimes on rare occasions I find myself, like today, daydreaming more than a decade and a half later feeling beautiful.