Pretty as a Picture

I received quite the compliment today.
An actor I hardly know, but felt a connection with at a callback months ago, commented on a picture I have on Facebook.
Wow. You're really gorgeous aren't you?
It was very sweet.
But there's more to it.

You see, this particular photo I took myself and put on Facebook nearly a year ago.
I can't believe it's already been a YEAR.
However can so many events take place in just 365 days?

And this photo I took for a particular boy, a boy who at one time saw me clearly but had come to no longer see me at all.
And I had hoped, if I wore my hair in those pigtails he fancied or gave the right look at just the right angle that maybe, somehow, he would remember all he once loved and see me as the beautiful girl he'd pined for all those years ago. 
I naively thought I could capture in one photograph all he failed to notice.
But I was mistaken.

My efforts were in vain and while I eventually got what I thought I wanted temporarily (no one can ever say I don't know how to get what I want) inevitably the boy who no longer saw me never again saw me.
Still hasn't.
And he never will.

And it took me a long time to accept that that's just fine.

I think all any woman wants is to feel really seen.  Not just as some fly-by-night sex on a stick. (Although I do appreciate the leers of the old married men who frequent Starbucks.  No.  Really.  Their smirks are priceless.)  Feeling desirable is swell but it's hollow, it's without.  It's like some delicious bottle of red wine but I'm just parched for water. 

I think the reason a lot of women stay with men they know aren't right for them is because they want these men to remember how much they once delighted in them.  Women are convinced if they become who they think their man would desire then maybe, just maybe, their Romeo will see the captivating beauty who sits before him.  And they fear if this man no longer sees them, then no man will.

I know part of the reason I fell for Prince Charming when I did was because I was reeling from a drawn out rejection and I was So. Tired. Of. Feeling. Invisible.  I was so desperate to feel what it was to be seen again.  So when the overflowing outpour of admiration put me on a pedestal you're damn right I wanted to be there.  I wanted to stay there!  Being rejected by PC may have been easier than my on again off again fiasco with Mr. Volcano but in some ways it was harder because I had remembered the sweet high of what it was to be seen by a handsome man.  And dammit, I wanted my high back and I wanted it yesterday.

But I learned as time drifted along that maturity brings highs so much greater than the fleeting ones of girlish validation.  I no longer needed him, any him, to see me.  I had learned to trust that where one will, so will another.  And another.  And another.

And if they didn't?  I know.  And surely that counts for something great.


So today, at a time when I'm becoming a creature unlike any other, when I'm learning to embrace the woman I truly am, the one whose filter free boldness offends some and delights others, on a day when I've remembered how full my life is s-o-l-o I was offered a small token of appreciation by a quiet observer, an unknown admirer who had to share his discovery.

I really am gorgeous.

And isn't it nice to know there will always be an attractive man who sees that, no matter how many frightened boys can't?