I’m an 18 year old girl. I don’t let people look at my face for too long. I never ever dare to look straight into their eyes as they talk to me. I’m afraid of what I’ll see. I know what their expression is probably going to be….disgust. I hate seeing the way their eyes examine every bit of my face like I have some kind of disease. Like I did this to myself and I’m careless because I don’t do anything about it. When the reality is, that I spend my entire day from the crack of dawn till after midnight taking pill after pill after pill to look somewhat beautiful. That I wash my face more times than I can keep count of. That the side effects of all the drugs I take to try and look beautiful are causing me a great deal of pain, but I s*** it up because I’d rather be in pain than be ugly. I photo shop all my pictures so people would see that if I didn’t have such terrible skin, that if they looked past my skin they’d see my real beauty..but it doesn’t matter. And it hurts when the most repeated comment you get from people is that “you only look good in photos, not in reality”. And what hurts even more is that these people are your own family. I feel like now all I have is my personality, I don’t have the looks. But even that, I don’t have. I get told all the time that I am very antisocial and not talkative or outgoing or fun to be around. So I’m practically completely useless. I’m not beautiful and I don’t have a great personality to make up for it either. That’s why I don’t let anyone close enough because I’m afraid if they knew how empty I was inside and outside they would walk the other way, as was the case with so many people I’ve met over the past year. I have zero self-confidence. I can’t even feel comfortable around girls, let alone get the courage to talk to guys. I never ever put myself out there, in a sense that if some guy was to try and complement me in any way I would instantly shut him down, in fear that it would backfire somehow if I accepted the complement and he would make a comment about how I wasn’t really all that. I used to be very intelligent and hardworking at school, back when my skin was okay and I could just be myself and carry on my life without worrying what people where thinking about my face. But now that I’m in college, and after the end of freshman year, I realized I failed academically as well as socially because of the way I look. It took such a huge toll on me. I couldn’t work well in groups. I couldn’t stand being in the same room as a cute guy who I was attracted to. I didn’t want that guy to see me as not pretty. I wanted so badly to impress him but that proved far too difficult for someone like me, given the fact that even if he was to look past my skin he would have nothing else to see. I knew I wouldn’t capture him with my personality because I knew very well I didn’t have one. So I stayed as far as possible from him as I could, in hopes that maybe one day I’ll be pretty again and I might work up the courage to talk to him…but just not now. My entire family is disappointed with me and my performance this year. I let so many people down including myself. I can’t stand looking in the mirror anymore because then it’ll only consolidate the fact that I am ugly both on the outside and the inside. I do not deserve the space I occupy in this world. I am a waste of breath. I just want to be beautiful.