why my grandparents' house upsets me

Right now, at this moment, I am sitting in a guest bed at my grandparents' house in Belmont, CA (near San Mateo).  The comforter is the same as it has always been--white with delicate floral patterns.  Every time I've spent the night here, I choose this bed.  I don't know why.  Perhaps it is because since infancy I've regarded this bed as a symbol of elegance and luxury--two things I fell in love with due to the several Disney princess movies I watched.  I wanted to be a princess.  I somehow connected royalty, charming princes, and enchanting songs to happiness.  I thought if I could grow up to become one of these beautiful, slender, kind-hearted and modest girls, I would be waltzed away to a fairytale kingdom by a handsome prince who truly loved me.  I wasn't alone in this dream.  In fact, many of my preschool and kindergarten friends dressed up as princesses.  They were mini Cinderellas and Belles with gorgeous taffeta dresses adorned by fake jewels and flowers.  Their mothers bought their costumes from the Disney store.  My mom, on the other hand, made us either reuse costumes or wear homemade ones.  So for my fifth Halloween, I was just an ordinary princess.  I wore a poofy dress that was no less uncomfortable than the store-bought ones, yet much uglier.  It was plain and white.  Upon my bowl-shaped haircut rested a tiny plastic tiara, no doubt from the dollar store.  To make things worse, I had to stay home because I was sick from the flu.  Or maybe I had lice.  Or both.  Nonetheless, I swore that I would never stop dreaming of the Disney princess lifestyle.  I grew determined to be like them--they were so beautiful and loved.  I thought maybe if I wanted it enough, if I believed enough, it would come true, just like Cinderella said.

I was so, so wrong.

I never was beautiful like those princesses.  I thought maybe it was just an ugly-duckling sort of thing, that when I got older I would get prettier, but as I got older, I actually got uglier.  I started putting on weight--muscle, mostly, but by Junior year in high school I no longer looked model-thin.  Sometime during or after elementary school, my nose started growing into this humongous beast of flesh and cartilage--nothing like the pretty, tiny noses of the princesses I loved.  I started to hate my bushy Iranian eyebrows, my boring brown hair and boring brown eyes, and especially my ugly name.  My new goal was to keep up good grades so that in the future I could go to a good college and make enough money to get a nose job and become a different person.  I was going to change my name to something normal, like Angela Brown or April Miller.  I was going to be so pretty that handsome rich guys would want to marry me and I could live happily ever after in my perfect little blond-haired, blue-eyed, Wonderbread-white paradise.  And then I would raise beautiful children and buy them whatever costumes they wanted from any store they wanted.

I kept this dream locked deep down inside of me.  I never told anyone how obsessed I was with this fantasy.  So when I started acting strange, I blamed it on teen drama.  Cutting myself with an X-acto knife, forcing myself to chuck up the food I ate so I could be bone-thin again, crying myself to sleep, hating myself...I said it was the stress of being a high school girl with straight A's and the pressures of varsity cross country and track.  I told this to my psychiatrist.  I told this to my mom.  I told this to my best friend.  I said I didn't know why I hated myself and how I looked, but promised I would get better.

I know it isn't princess-like to lie, but I did.  Every time I saw a popular girl who was blonde, thin, well-dressed, or had a hot boyfriend, I was instantly reminded of my failure to achieve Disney princess beauty and popularity.  I threw myself a pity party and starved myself for months, which slowed me down quite a bit and had almost no effect on my weight loss efforts except that it brought my metabolism down to a sluggish rate.  I am still struggling with issues of self-esteem, but I'm trying.  I've been to a therapist twice, but I stopped because talking about it made me embarrassed and didn't really help at all.  I'm healing myself by myself.

And yet here I am in my grandma and grandpa's house, because my family members decided that I am adequately prepared to take care of my grandpa for a week while my grandma helps my oldest sister move to Florida.  As if I was emotionally and physically stable enough to sit in this grand house, reminded by my childhood fantasies that never materialized.

So, now you know, people of the Internet.  I had to get that ridiculous secret off my chest and I figured, "Hey, why not post it on that blog I have that no one reads?" Thanks for taking the time and not judging me.  I love you, fellow strange person.♥♥♥