In which a new beginning is acknowledged

I’ve felt ugly since I was around 11. I’ve always been the girl who people would ask out for a joke, who would never get a boyfriend, who no one would ever fancy and who people were hesitant about being friends with. But these last few months I have seen myself as someone that will make someone very lucky at some point. When I was 12 a ‘friend’ read my diary and then told the rest of my year at school about it. In a brief moment of self confidence I’d written that I’d looked in the mirror and thought that I wasn’t entirely ugly. I was ridiculed for this. Of course I was ugly, how could I possibly think otherwise. Today, however, I’m going to reiterate that same point. I am beautiful. I can look at myself and see that I’m beautiful. I have a personality that I would like to have in someone I’d be in a relationship with. I have a job that I love, I’m living in a place that I love, I have hobbies that I love - and if certain things had worked out the way I initially wanted them to, I would have none of those things.

I’ve spent the best part of just over two years with dates etched in my memory - hurdles to be overcome each year. 8th January: the evening that, after a long and meaningful conversation and promises to try again and make things work, I found out that he’d been cheating on me. 31st January: the day he proposed. 11th April: the day I lost my virginity. 20th June: his birthday. Songs that I can’t listen to, places I can’t go, people that I find difficult to talk to. We got together when I was 17, and so suddenly I had to work out all this ‘how to be single’ stuff as well as ‘how to finish university’ and ‘how to be an adult’.

This year was the year we were supposed to be getting married - and yet somehow this now matters far less than it ever has before. Life is so unimaginably different now and it feels like almost all of it I never would have done if my relationship with him had worked out. I’ve lost a few friendships that were harmful for me. Gained so many amazing wonderful friends and grown far closer to some I already had. I’m living in Moscow. Moscow, for God’s sake. My ex never wanted to travel, was scared of places where English wasn’t spoken. 8th January 2010 was the start of my life. This life where I think I’m beautiful, where God shook me out of my comfort zone, where I stopped being ‘safe’ and started living, where I’ve travelled, where I’ve laughed, where I’ve cried, where I’ve made decisions that have turned out to be mistakes and decisions that have turned out to be among the best I’ve ever made.

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