Pretty Ugly

I’m writing this piece from a corner in heaven, from the simplicity and the beauty of nature… And I wish to ask with purely naive intensions… What is it that you see when you look into the mirror? How does your inner voice guide you and through which messages? What is the proponent narrative, is it glorifying or berating? I wonder where does that narrative come from, the inner voice within you or the external noises you hear from the outer world? And how do you see yourself? As a person who is worth loving and being loved, or as someone who hates themselves, who has no great significance, who is unworthy of love? Before searching for the answers, I suggest you read the following poem…

I’m very ugly
So don’t try to convince me that
I am a very beautiful person
Because at the end of the day
I hate myself in every single way
And I’m not going to lie to myself by saying
There is beauty inside of me that matters
So rest assured I will remind myself
That I am a worthless, terrible person
And nothing you say will make me believe
I still deserve love
Because no matter what
I am not good enough to be loved
And I am in no position to believe that
Beauty does exist within me
Because whenever I look in the mirror I always think
Am I as ugly as people say?

And… Now that you’ve read it… What do you think? How did these lines make you feel? Did it create an approval about your self-perspective; thinking “Yes, I am ugly and unworthy”, or a thought of “No, no way, this definitely does not represent me! I am a loved, good, and beautiful person”. Perhaps you’ve found it annoying, maybe it made you slightly uncomfortable, or it didn’t affect you at all. But I am sure it made you think… It might have raised an awareness on how you look at yourself, how you speak to yourself and the way you are perceived. Perhaps…

Now, I invite you to pause for a moment, leave all these questions aside, and read the poem again; this time read it at the opposite direction, from bottom up…

Yeeees…. You have read the same poem backwards. What happened? What sort of thoughts emerged in your mind? What impact did it create? I wonder what goes on in your mind… How much of the lines resonate with you? In other words, to what degree do these lines reflect your inner voice over your self-perception? Does it resonate more with your inner voice, or your self-perception because of the external voices?

I know, these are difficult questions to answer. Perhaps my experience may better reflect what I am trying to explain. When I read it for the first time, I thought to myself, “well… yes I may be so, because I previously experienced it and repeatedly felt through people and incidents.” The truth, this perception of mine wasn’t that weird. Don’t we all explore and get to know ourselves through others’ eyes? The way I perceive, see, look at and judge myself does not solely relate to my own self-perception and self-reflection, but is also directly related to the events and people around me.

The interesting part was when I read the poem backwards. My first reaction was: “Wait a minute; these lines -onwards or backwards, none of them reflect my self-perception, it cannot! I am a loving and compassionate person who is worthy for loving and being loved; and I have no doubt over it”. How? Because, having reached this maturity level, I know myself well enough, that I can evaluate, judge, and approve myself, mostly through my life experiences and my inner voice, rather than others’ words or thoughts. In other words, I explore myself through a process of self-reflection of what is around me, through the questions I ask myself, and the inner voices I listen to, and only then I choose between judging or approving myself.

What I am trying to emphasize is: our self-evaluation, self-respect and self-identity; where, by all means are followed by a judging or approving inner voice, mostly come from the messages and words we receive from the external world. In psychology, under the umbrella concept of Neuroception, such manners of perception are called as inner-perception or inner-look (intraception) and outer-perception or outer-look (extraception). The ideal or desired way is that a person builds an evaluation and approval mechanism that is based on his/her own self-perception. Meanwhile, needless to mention that today’s youth is building their whole identity on external perceptions and reflections.

To sum up, my motivation was to bring attention to how we perceive ourselves and build our identities. If this short poem can give us a variety of feelings, reading from onwards or even backwards, then we should stop and look into the mirror, hear what is circulating in our minds and seek the balance between them, and catching what is inner or outer perception. Our perception shouldn’t be solely dependent on inner perspective, just as it should not be based only on external.

Greetings form İzmir Tırazlı…
July 10th, 2022

*Pretty Ugly (2018) is a poem written by Abdullah Shoaib.