Equanimity by Emily

“My beloved is the most beautiful among thousands…and thousands…and thousands.”

We sing these words all together in front of the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus Himself, and when the song arises out of nothing, I feel a sting to the heart each time. It’s one of the few spiritual melodies that speaks to a specific fear I hold in the silence of my heart. There was a time when I treasured the words because of their ability to assuage my raging scrupulosity—that there was nothing beautiful about my soul, nothing, except what the One Who Created it could see. The lyrics hint at the helpful suggestion that it is never, not ever, with our eyes that Heaven sees. That what we despise in ourselves is only a trick of the light.

But this time, the words drive home a message that is almost laughable in its literality—so much so that my fingers are resistant even now to type it. “My beloved is the most beautiful among thousands…her hair falls perfectly no matter the angle…her features are arranged in exactly the right way…her wrinkles could never detract from her caring smile …her clothes are a complement to her personality, not a deterrant.” It’s a message my soul, heart, mind, and body, have been aching for for nearly ten years now. The fight to make it more than a passing idea is starting to wear me into the ground.

Even now, I can’t remember when exactly it became so difficult to look in the mirror. I can remember before that time: in seventh grade, my bespectacled, braces-wearing self thought herself the prettiest girl in most rooms, even as her bangs flopped into her eyes. I can certainly remember after that time, when my ninth grade self wore a ponytail (the only safe hairstyle) every single day until it threatened to break off. But what happened in between that planted the seeds of self-loathing so deep? So deep that they would remain well after the appropriate age of fifteen, eighteen, twenty-two?

For a while, I thought it was simply growing older that would make me beautiful, and therefore comfortable with my face. I counted down the years, days, and minutes until my sixteenth birthday: the arbitrary age when I had decided everyone was grown up. I dreaded the onset of my seventeenth birthday, the official death knell of my hopes: that it was merely age that gifted self-esteem. I hated the idea of turning seventeen, since to me I never really turned sixteen. I was still the same gawky kid I had been for years, no sign of a reprieve in sight.

And that was the moment I knew: it isn’t age that makes you beautiful, it’s confidence.

But confidence in what, exactly? Confidence in my looks? In my personality? My life choices? For they all play a part in the mirage I carefully craft so that no one discovers the darkest secret of all: deep down I am ugly.

Even as I type it, I laugh out loud. I’m not ugly. I have beautiful eyes that light up when I smile. I can make just about anyone laugh, provided they have the right sense of humor. I have the kind of hair that certain women would sell a kidney for. I’m not ugly. So why can’t I see it?

James Cordon once gave an inspiring, humorous speech about his struggle with his weight. In it, he coined a phrase that deeply resonated with me: “I have had good days, and I have had bad months.” Nothing could have put it better. A good day looks like taking a reasonable amount of time getting ready in the morning (under fifteen minutes), feeling fully comfortable in your body all day, looking in the mirror without a pep talk first, and putting your pajamas on at the end of the day, satisfied with the knowledge you didn’t spend every moment worrying over how you looked. A bad month, on the other hand, looks like morning after morning of berating yourself for taking more like twenty minutes to get ready, and from the minute your eyes leave the mirror in the morning to the moment you take off your make-up at night, you are checking every reflective surface to make sure all is well: if it is, you admonish yourself for being so vain; if it isn’t, you admonish yourself for making everyone look at someone so ugly. For how could someone be a good teacher, for instance, if they couldn’t handle doing their hair? Everyone else has figured out how to do hair, why can’t you? Everyone else wears the right clothes, why can’t you? Nobody else needs makeup to look pretty, why do you? Everybody else realizes you have to wear makeup in order to leave the house, why don’t you?

There have been only a few times I’ve let slip the problem I can’t name to anyone else. Once, I had spent an hour crying in my room after the hundredth bad day in a row. I turned off all the lights in the apartment so I could make hot chocolate without anyone realizing I’d been crying. My roommate came home and immediately turned on all the lights. I thought briefly about lying: I was crying about schoolwork, or homesickness, or anything less embarrassing than what twelve-year-olds cry over. But I told her the truth, and it was better for a while. Until the next time.

Another time, I decided to confide in a friend of mine who was in the process of becoming a close friend. On the way home from a trip to the grocery store, I told her the hardest part of my summer had not been the crushing workload of my master’s degree classes, but rather the fact that I went through every day believing myself to be the ugliest person on campus. I pitied my roommates for having such an oddball to look at all the time, I avoided mirrors to such a degree that I was back to my old COVID habit of keeping myself from the bathroom until I physically couldn’t stand it any longer. She looked at me in horror.

But how could she honestly not know? How could anyone in my life not know, when they see me every day? They see the hairstyles that work in the same rotation. They see the fervent checks in the mirror, and the quick fix of whatever was wrong. They must know, right?

She asked if I was planning to tell my therapist about it. I rolled my eyes and laughed it off. This isn’t the sort of thing I talk to my therapist about, I told her. This isn’t school stress or existential dread. And besides, it wasn’t really that bad. In general, there were more good days than there used to be. A bad day didn’t look as horrible as it used to.

But still, I’m twenty-two, and I find myself walking home on a long day, crying tears only God will see, because I can’t handle the truth: that it actually was never that important.

He holds my hand, and reminds me of the same line that I work hard to internalize: “My beloved is the most beautiful among thousands…and thousands…and thousands.” Not on the good days. Not on the bad. But always. Not when she’s twenty-two. Not when she’s fifty-five. But always. Not while she was alive. Not after. But always.

And I have the strength for the next day.