First Kiss

The first story I thought I would begin this blog with is a simple one. It’s simple in content, but it explains my background a little. I was raised in a conservative protestant Christian household about thirty minutes south of Seattle. I am the youngest of five girls, and we all come from a woman who had modeled in the 60s and 70s. She raised her girls to value beauty and appearance almost as much as our faith in Jesus. As a result my four older sisters became beauties, sought after by all sorts of male kind.

When I began to mature my mother and my sisters treated me like a Barbie Doll to be dressed and trained how to behave. To them I was an ideal candidate due to my long blonde hair, tall figure and green eyes. I, however, found their constant scrutiny on my appearance overbearing and exhausting to keep up with. On one hand I tried to do as I was told: straighten my hair just right, make sure my eye makeup was even, wear tight clothes to show off my underdeveloped curves, but pretend I wasn’t uncomfortable. On the other hand I rebelled: I wore baggy clothes, no makeup, and dared to put on my glasses instead of contacts.

I was having an identity crisis of knowing if I should place my worth on physical appearance, or if I even cared. I found that the more I cared about what people thought I looked like, the more I became insecure with myself. However, when I tried not to care, it seemed to creep up in my mind anyway. This confusion and insecurity made me distant from the opposite sex and perhaps just distant in general.

One day at the age of 16, just stepping out of the shower and dressing in my most comfortable clothes, my parents asked me if I wanted to join them to go to Barns and Noble, knowing my love for books. Thoughts passed through my head warning me that I didn’t look suitable to go outdoors. Had my sisters had anything to do with it, they would have forced me to take a few hours in the bathroom to look remotely appropriate. Realizing that I felt perfectly comfortable as I was, I threw caution to the wind and left looking as bland as I possibly could.

My parents and I parted ways in the Barns and Noble parking lot while they went to a computer store and I to a bookstore. However, I was stopped before I made it inside. A boy around the age of 18 stopped me and asked if I could take part in a survey. I don’t remember what the survey was about. I probably wasn’t paying much attention due to the myriad of compliments this boy gave me.

“So, uh, how old are you?”

“Sixteen” I blushed.

“Wow! Only sixteen? I thought you would be eighteen or something.”

The more underhanded, bashful compliments he would give me, the more frazzled I became and wanted to run away from there. Lord only knows how red my face was then. After a short while, I somehow stumbled over my words in attempt to tell him that I had to go.

“Oh well, can I have a hug then before you leave?” A HUG??? For my friends and family who know me now understand I’m not a fan of physical affection, how much worse was I then?

Blushing even deeper I gave him a hug and retracted as quickly as possible.

“How about a kiss?” By this time I was trying to escape, and so without thinking I turned to kiss his cheek. However, I wasn’t quick enough before he turned his head and kissed me square on the mouth. It was short and simple mainly due to the fact that I turned as fast as I could, taking sanctuary in my favorite bookstore.

Now before I move on, I need to say that what this boy did was inappropriate. I didn’t know him and he could have gotten into a great deal of trouble for doing even a simple act of kissing me like that, being that it was unwanted. I, luckily for him, was an insecure, impressionable teenager who wouldn’t have even considered this as inappropriate. I was just stuck on the compliment that he gave me. How was it that I received so much attention from someone when I looked so plain? At that age I would have thought that being that I had no makeup or sexy clothes on that I would be undesirable.

There was a French saying that struck me then about if you believed that you were beautiful, you would actually become beautiful. It was then that I realized that attractiveness didn’t really come from makeup or clothes or whether you wore glasses or not. What mattered was if I was comfortable with myself, regardless on how I looked.

Confidence, as I learned then, and have to keep on learning is a difficult thing to cultivate in yourself. But the more you have it, the more people will be drawn to you. This moment was really important for me to realize this for myself, although I will admit, I still have to relearn it all the time.