For all the other beautiful creatures

Even tall people feel small, too.

Being a 16-year-old standing 5’10 in the small city of Tacloban is not an easy life to live. People often label you with words and terms that may be, in one way or another, offending. From the moment I acquired the knowledge to understand what they meant by “kapre” (a gigantic, monstrous mythical creature), it would automatically occur to me that something was unfathomably wrong, with me. So I grew up ashamed and hateful, with the “abnormal” height that I have, as they say it.

I was locked inside our house, just like Rapunzel, except that there was no one to be there for me. It was because my father believed that going outside and playing with the other children would just do me harm. It was as if he was thinking about my own good, as if I shouldn’t be stooping down to the level of others because I was, as he said, “special.”

But then I started eavesdropping and heard our helpers mention the real reason behind my being isolated. My father was just ashamed of me; even my biological father, from whom I got some of my genetics, couldn’t accept an ogre for a daughter because in truth he was longing for and expecting a lovely princess. I was different from those other young girls who were dainty and beautiful, and accepted. I always

ended up being the last of almost everything—at the end of the line, sitting at the back of the bus during field trips, having stupid roles during plays and recitals, and a lot more miserable experiences that people think only happen in the movies or in fictional stories. I was the tallest kid in 4th, writing something on the board.

Years and years, and tears. I mean years. It’s like my entire existence was made up of just being tall. It’s like how some people think of Tacloban: as if all it really had was Supertyphoon “Yolanda.”

Nobody cares that I sing well or have good grades, nobody cared how well I paint, how lithely I dance, how I am actually beautiful. People often focus on the things they think are ugly or negative, even if doing so is senseless. Just because you’re different, they abruptly stick labels on you and make you feel like an outcast, thus making you feel bad about yourself.

Life is a choice (this sentence may seem too much of a cliché, but it really does make sense). Everything is a choice. Getting affected and letting them win are a choice. But winning and proving them wrong, no matter how hard the battle you fought, are also a choice. The result is that victorious feeling you feel when you see them stuck as petty creatures fiddling with other, grander, existences because their lives are too dull to matter in the first place. That’s when the envy kicks in and they start doing what they do best: bullying.

The world is filled with clichés. Make certain you don’t fall into that category.

Beauty is within the beholder. A masterpiece doesn’t have to be fully appreciated at first glance.

Sometimes, only those who bother to make the effort to understand each stroke and symmetry are the ones who should matter. Basically, they are the only ones that will matter.

It’s about time we thought deeply and realized that the meaning of our existence is not about pleasing shallow people but sustaining a purpose-driven life. Knowing the truth about ourselves will help make us realize who we were, who we are, and who we want to be. We cannot live our lives according to mere words that are at most empty prattle. Finding myself amidst the regretful and silhouetted past was better than staying there. It was then that I gained the strength to conquer the odds and beat the hell out of them—by, of course, killing them with kindness and my towering success over the years.

We can’t fight fire with fire—perhaps goodness as extinguisher, instead?

Improving yourself every day and spending your spare time doing the things that will make you happy and at the same time productive—those are a must-do. Typing through countless failures (even when you’re an instant laughingstock) and steadfastness made me come up with all this.

Which would be all for naught if no one gets to read this other than my best boyfriend. Pondering some thoughts and sharing them with readers who may relate in one way or another are not a waste of time. Using my privileged rights in a democratic country wouldn’t hurt, I think. I may not be the princess my dad expected me to be, but I sure am the “ugly duckling” they thought I will be stuck with. And guess what? Not all athletes are dumb.

Because this young lady who wrote this piece is far more than meets the eye, She is also a beauty queen crowned at the early age of 15.

This scenario doesn’t apply only to a “giant” like me, but also to all the other beautiful creatures who are always being judged and are less appreciated. Spread the love and the apt affinity for yourself.

Ivy Mae De Mesa, 16, is a student of Leyte Normal University.