My self esteem is non existent.

I've always felt like an ugly duckling, since I was very young. I had glasses, I desperately needed braces but that wasn't going to happen anytime soon. I had giant hips and scraggly thin hair and stretch marks for days because of a huge growth spurt.

When I was 14 these girls at my school played a horrible prank on me, strongly implying I was a dog. It was really traumatizing because they did it in front of a lot of people, and I was alreay going through a tough time because my parents has recently divorced and remarried and all sorts.

I was shattered and so grateful I happened to be leaving that school. But my self esteem had been stomped on by a bunch of bitches. I developed an eating disorder, I weighed just over 50kgs at 175cm tall. I was self harming and I just felt worthless. I found it difficult to makes friends at my new school and just never felt accepted. I became depressed and bitter. And my parents never noticed.

It took six YEARS for me to kind of accept myself again. I was in my 20's, working and earning money so I could buy myself products for my hair and such. I also got braces. None of them did any miracles but it was an improvement.

I unfortunately have a condition whereby my teeth move around quite a bit so they've got wires glued to the back of them to help limit that, but they're not as straight as they used to be after the braces. I'm considering getting them again. And because of this condition my hair is also a mission it's very fine and thin and frizzy due to various deficiencies but no matter what I do and no matter how good I am at keeping my levels up, it's still a mess.

I also bought myself a microneedling pen so I can perform my own microneedling treatments. I do this on my face to limit ageing as well as on my stretch marks. Again, they haven't performed miracles but my stretch marks look a lot better than they used to.

Anyway, I digress.

I found out my husband cheated last year. I was devastated and told him I wanted a divorce. He begged me and said he was sorry and that he wouldn't ever do it again.

And you know what, he hasn't.

But it ruined my self esteem. He hasn't told me I'm pretty outside of the bedroom in forever. He says he doesn't know what's the right thing to say to me.

I know I'm a plain Jane, I know I'm not gorgeous. But I feel like that's the reason why he cheated. I do everything for him. My life revolves around him and our household. I encourage him when he's down, I praise him when he does well. I console him when he's had a bad day and I congratulate him when he gets accolades. I cook and clean and make sure he's got lunch and dinner, most of the time anyway. His clothes are always washed and ironed, and I do all this while having a full time job myself.

The only place I am slacking is my looks. I've been so down about this lately, I just don't feel like I'm ever going to feel better. I'm always going to compare myself to other women, always going to hate myself. I know it's so superficial, but I guess because I was told from a young age I'm ugly it's just always going to be in the back... Or the front... Of my mind.