Feeling: overwhelmed
Listening to: The Police - Every Breath You Take
Reading/Watching: The End of an Age

Attention all members of the Katie a.k.a. MegMarch Improvement Society:

I do not have a low self-esteem. I don't necessarily have the highest one on the planet (those are reserved for spoiled six-year-olds), but I am doing just fine. I like myself. I think I am cool. I would rather be me than any other person, because it's hard enough understanding this operating system, let alone contemplating a new one. I do not need affirmation or flattery to make me feel like a complete, well-adjusted person (although it's nice as a rare side bonus).

When I say I am not beautiful, I don't mean that I'm a hideous cousin-of-a-rhesus-monkey whose-mother-was-a-crack-whore. I mean I am not Helen of Troy. I know beautiful, and this is not it. It does not make me somehow broken to admit it, so stop trying to fix me.

This is not your cue to step up and tell me that all I have to do is believe in myself, follow my dreams, and remember that true beauty is on the inside. That's what Disney movies are for, which is why they draw all the princesses with waifish figures, pointy chins, and scary buggy eyes.

I say I will never try out for American Idol because only the exceptionally bad and the exceptionally beautiful make it on TV, and you think this means I'm underestimating myself. No. This means I'm trying to be funny, and happen to think that having a wry sense of humor will help me a heck of a lot more than deluding myself into thinking I am the next Britney Spears, and all that's standing in my way is plastic surgery and an eating disorder. You do not need to go on a quest to improve my self-image. My self-image burrowed upward a long way and got very grubby to arrive at this point, and it's taking a rest-stop.

If you drop a rare compliment, I will smile and say thank you, or blush, or be surprised. If you pile on the flattery, hoping to change my outlook on life, I will know you are lying and proceed to ignore you.

You do not need to save me. So stop trying.

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