When I was younger, I was really ugly. I was the ugliest adolescent girl in 7th grade, and people made sure I knew that.

I had friends but I never hung out with any of them on school nights or even on weekends. I had maybe one girl friend I hung out with on school nights because we were in cheerleading together, and I stayed at her house on a Friday night once a month maybe. I was very socially awkward and didn’t have many friends at all, even though I was nice to everyone.

That being said, I remember always sitting in my room and reading the Allure magazines my mom got in the mail, and I’d constantly be in my room studying how to be pretty, how to get the boy, how to do your hair and makeup. When I say I took notes and had a full notebook full of notes from Allure, I mean that literally. It was awful, and I was miserable because none of the boys wanted to be my boyfriend and I knew that because all the other girls on the cheer squad had boyfriends except me and none of them even bothered to try to talk to me. Who would wanna talk to that ugly girl over there with the bad acne, braces and glasses? I was the DUFF because all my friends were gorgeous for being 12, and they still are to this day. The only good feature I had was my butt and my boobs were bigger than most in 7th grade.

To this day, I still feel like the DUFF because of what I went through in junior high. I still look at those old pictures and it’s burned in my mind what I looked like at that age and how depressed, and jealous I was because these girls were so pretty and I was hideous; very obviously the DUFF.

So, there you have it. One of my deepest secrets that’s I’ve never told anyone that I actually know and am close to. I still to this day remember and use some of those notes that I wrote back in the day, even though I had a huge glow up since then. Now I’m 19, and I’m a lot more confident than I was then, but still have a lot of insecurities from then too, and I’d never wish that kind of depression and insecurity on anyone ever.

I hope all you ladies look in the mirror every morning and see how beautiful you really are and tell yourself that too. You’re all so beautiful ❤️