"God don't make no junk." That's an interesting phrase which I don't believe. To begin with, I'm an atheist. And if God represents nature, the statement is patently untrue. There are mistakes, fails,if you will, everywhere in nature. There have always been plants and animals that have misshapen limbs, missing parts, broken bits. I'm looking at a squirrel out on my deck as I write this. She's got a big bare spot in the middle of her tail. It's not attractive. A friend was visiting the other day and noticed it right away. "Oh, what happened to that one?", she said. I replied that she/he had been around for a few years and seemed to do just fine. Anyway, in the myriad combinations of DNA and seemingly limitless human stupidity, such as environmental degredation and big Pharma , shit happens. I knew I was broken from a very early age because my mom kept trying to get me fixed. This may be one of the first lessons that many ugly people learn; we need to be fixed. I can't address the particular hell of those young people who have gotten to age 13 and suddenly woken up to a face full of zits, or folks who have been damaged by fire or accident. I don't know that particular hell. I'm from the "broken from birth" camp. One of my very first memories is of a doctor removing stitches from my face, very roughly. The thing about getting your face repaired is that it doesn't earn you a lot of sympathy. You don't have cancer or heart disease, you just need to not be so ugly. And trust me, I knew even as a young child that I was much luckier than the kid fighting for his life across the hall in the hospital. I'm just saying that doctors and nurses have only so much compassion and they tend to use it for the kids who need it the most. I've come to believe, as a visibly broken person, that it is "normal" for the first impression I make, especially with men, to be negative. From tiniest amoebae to the great whale, we are here to replicate our DNA, that's all. And we all want the best shot for doing that. We have been programed over eons to look for the best mate, the guy with the broad shoulders, the woman with wide hips. And symmetry. We're all looking for symmetry. It signals health. It signals a good bet that children with that person will be healthy and strong and most able to pass our precious DNA on to the next generation. I am not symmetrical. I am asymmetrical. It's been scientifically proven that everyone, from babies on up, respond more readily to symmetrical faces. Oh well. Here's the thing. Some of us are asymmetrical, and our chances of reproducing are lowered. We are visibly broken. But everyone, every person is flawed. As a child I used to wonder if there was someone in the world who was perfectly happy, a pretty girl who'd grown up in a happy home with enough to eat, got good grades, had good food, fell in love, got married, never felt worry or fear or doubt. Now I know that no such person exists. Everyone, everyone is broken, everyone is flawed, everyone has pain. Being visibly broken from birth, we get that message really early. Shit happens. And to my mind, the earlier you get that lesson, the happier you can be. Life is suffering, things don't always work out, shit happens. Once you get that, really get it, and stop feeling shocked, angry, and resentful every time it smacks you in the face, you can be really grateful for every good day, good hour, good minute.

Just a few words about why I'm writing this and to establish my credentials as an ugly woman. As I do every few months or so, I Googled "ugly", "being ugly", terms like that. And this time I bumped into a tumblr on the subject. Being older, I'd heard of, but hadn't seen tumblr before. Anyway, it was a page called Ugly People Problems and I spent 15 minutes nodding, laughing, sighing at each small shot to the heart of being ugly. I saw that the poster is a 20 year old from Australia, and many of her thoughts reflected the isolation and sheer shit that is the lot of the ugly adolescent. She's a wonderful writer. So I thought, I've been an ugly teenager, an ugly young adult, an ugly middle aged woman, etc, maybe I can share a little of the perspective that years bring. I was born in 1955 with a cleft palate and congenital lip deformity. The common term is hairlip. "Hairlip" is a word often used in older novels to connote a person so ugly that she is beneath the attentions of even the most luckless idiot. Such as, "Marry Lady Devenish? Why I'd sooner kiss a hairlip! Ahahahaha!" Like that. Back in 1955, congenital lip deformity repair was nothing like the magical transformation that is largely completed after birth. I had many operations; about 18 before I was 20. Each surgery held the promise of a straight, less bulbous nose, an actual philtrum above my lip instead of a scar, an actual lip instead of an uneven bumpy mess, an actual chin, cheekbones, etc. Each surgery failed to deliver. My teeth are terrible; crooked because of the deformity, and yellow from the prescription drugs my mom took when she was pregnant. Braces didn't help much. Oh, and I've been six feet tall from about 18 years old. While dear friends and the professionally compassionate will say, "Oh, don't say that, you're not ugly!", I have a lifetime of experiences that tell me different: -My mother said that the old women in the neighborhood where I was born told her I was a curse from God. -No dates,ever. Oh, once a "friend" and I were sent into an ice cream shop to pickup cones for a group in the car. While we were leaning over the case to make our choices, I put my hand on his shoulder. He looked wildly around the shop to see if anyone had noticed, then turned to me and said, "Don't ever, ever, touch me again!" -I was a college student in the 70s; the era of free sexual expression and had no sex. I went to a college known for sexual abandon and had no sex. I wore slinky dresses and sang sexy Bonnie Raitt blues songs and had no sex. -I've never, ever been told I was pretty. Or been whistled at. I'm a feminist and yes, I understand that sexual harassment is wrong. -I do music therapy with the elderly. A couple of years ago, a older woman said, "What are you, a man or a woman?" I get that a lot since I'm so tall and have very short hair, so I happily told her I was a woman. She said, "You can't be a woman, you're too ugly!" That's enough to begin with, I suppose. This is not going to be a blog about my pain, except as it may help explain my philosophies and coping strategies. Let me end this first post by saying that I like my life, I know how lucky I am in so many ways. I've never met anyone I wanted to be more than I want to be myself. If you're ugly and you're hurting, know that I've been there, I still go there sometimes. Let's get through this together.