beauty in ugly

I got into a little argument with a friend of mine from work. He’s been like a brother to me ever since we started working together and it’s funny how one little thing ticked me off to the point where I stopped talking to him. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m usually a sport when it comes to my nose but for some strange reason, that day was just not my day. He made a little drawing of me with an exaggeratedly big nose and an even exaggeratedly bigger pimple and then suddenly all the months of brotherhood seemed irrelevant. In all my immaturity, I forgot that this person was and is a good friend to me and I shouldn’t have been so quick to write him off.

I don’t know what it is about my nose. Most days, I’m completely fine with it but there are just days like yesterday when it becomes my trigger. It’s the key to the vault that houses my insecurity. Suddenly, I feel so ugly and I just want to hide in a little corner. My senses heightened, I get a little paranoid and I start to think that maybe everyone’s talking about my nose. Why wouldn’t they? It sits there on my face just begging for attention. HEY THERE EVERYBODY! THIS IS CB AND I’M HIS NOSE!

I remember a few weeks back, some friends of mine were talking about rhinoplasty. A friend admitted to getting some work done and I asked him if he thought I should get some work done. He said if I thought it would make me feel better, why not? All of a sudden, a million questions started swimming in my head. Why the hell not? What was stopping me? Should I get a nose job? I’d have to move to Switzerland or somewhere really far and start over if I don’t want anybody to notice it but in the end, would it be worth it? Would I finally have that inner peace I feel was robbed from me when I inherited my mother’s nose?

My mother is not ugly. Far from it, I think she’s one of the most beautiful women ever. In old sepia pictures of her, I could see she was a knock-out. Talent scouts and boys with flowers and equally flowery words surrounded her and with bated breath, watched her with admiring eyes. Why was I so bothered by my nose when my mom went through life just fine with hers? I suddenly felt guilty. I felt like I was betraying my mother for wanting to erase a part of me that was distinctly hers.

So while I do feel a little insecure about how I look, I know that I wouldn’t really do anything drastic (borderline self-mutilating) about it. It’s who I am. It shows where I come from and if only for that reason, I don’t want to change anything. Just like when a really good friend made a comment about how “Filipino” I sound, instead of feeling bad I actually saw it as a compliment. While it may seem bad (especially coming from a communications trainer), I think it’s good that I’m grounded and that I know where I come from. Don’t get me wrong. I take my job seriously but just like what I said when I first got into this industry, I’m not about to say innernet or nuculer just to sound like an American. I’m not in the business of Americanizing Filipinos and I think a little heritage would do us all some good.