Sometimes looking in the mirror and seeing someone you like isn’t about vanity.

It’s about feeling good about the decisions you made that day. One decision where you were brave. Another where something felt unfamiliar. Another where you’re still not sure whether you were stupid or brave.

It’s about feeling good about the way you treat people, and the way you treat yourself. About not feeling self-conscious, but present. Aware. Having some compassion for yourself.

Sometimes the way you look can drag you down, and I don’t think it’s always about beauty. It’s about the way you perceive yourself.

It’s about everything you’ve carried from yesterday into today, from last year into this year. Everything you haven’t been able to let go of. Everything you know you should let go of, but still hold on to.

And I am not fishing for compliments. I’m seriously asking for help.

I’ve always been self-conscious about my body and my face. Going into an interview, I would straighten my curls and put on makeup that maximized the way I looked. I would contour my nose, make my lips look bigger, try to make my face more symmetrical.

I used to over-pluck my brows to the point of driving my mom crazy. I’d shave them and make them so thin.

I never really understood how to dress.

I think I just masked through life.

The way I dressed was performative, or based on what other people would say, or what other people might like, or what I imagined they might like. Most of the time it was simply based on comfort, and on the fact that I didn’t want my clothes touching me.

But I dream of being someone who wears clothes as expression.

Someone who doesn’t dress to hide or assimilate.

I want to be free.

I also want to look put together.

I work a corporate job. I meet people every day. My job isn’t about how I look. I’m not a model. I’m in sales. But I’ve struggled so hard with accepting my job, and therefore with accepting the attire that comes with it.

I’ve always been cynical about everything in life. Now I have a real person’s job, and I can’t be cynical in quite the same way anymore because it’s serious. Sometimes I even feel guilty for being cynical. I should be grateful. There are so many people struggling in this economy, in this life. I try to do my best.

But I don’t think I’m fully in it.

I’m afraid of making mistakes.

I don’t really commit because I’m afraid of making the wrong choice. I think people sometimes call that ego: the part of us that wants to be perfect, that doesn’t want to be seen failing.

So I wear the same things.

I stick with the same things until I feel stuck every morning.

I keep thinking, Would someone I saw somewhere wear this?

But not because I’m inspired by them.

Because I don’t feel safe enough to branch out and do my own thing.

And it’s so tiring.

The strange thing is that I usually end up doing what I believe is the right thing between all the possible “right” things.

But why doesn’t it feel good if it’s the right thing?

I’m probably overthinking it, aren’t I?

I want to feel confident.

I want to reinvent myself.

But I don’t think it’s really about clothes or even about how I look. I think it’s about the way I present myself.

I want to seem more confident. More open. I want to like people and have them like me. I want to be open to them and present with them.

I want my clothes and my appearance to say:

I am here.

I woke up.

I am present.

I put this on.

It doesn’t have to be perfect.

It can be wrinkly. The colors don’t have to go together perfectly.

It can just be mine.

Lately, I bought hair dye. I dyed my hair a kind of rusty maroon, and it made me feel better.

Not because maroon is particularly beautiful.

Because it made me feel like I could be anyone I wanted.

I didn’t have to be the person I was yesterday: scared, defensive, taking things personally.

I could be the person with maroon hair.

The person who dyes her hair.

I’ve always been afraid of being judged. I’ve heard people say, Look at her. She looks gaudy. She’s trying too hard. She looks slutty. She should just be natural.

So I learned to stay within the boundaries of conventionally attractive. Natural. Approachable. Healthy-looking. Safe.

Easy to approve of.

Easy to reject.

Easy to say something about.

And I think I chose those things out of fear, not preference.

My mom has never really been someone who wears much makeup or dyes her hair bold colors. And that felt safe to me too.

Maybe that’s normal.

Our mothers are our first real-life influencers. They’re some of the first beautiful women we see, if we’re lucky. We learn what womanhood looks like by watching them.

And I absorbed a lot of it.

I also kept remnants of who I was as a teenager: the music scene, the angsty teenager, the slightly goth, slightly tomboyish thing.

But I’m tired of feeling like I’m carrying all these old versions of myself around.

I just want to be stylish.

I want to come into my own.

I’m thirty.

I know I can’t compare myself to anyone else’s journey.

But sometimes I wish I could just skip the part where I’m still trying to figure out who I am.

And then there were the green lenses.

I don’t even know what they’re properly called. Colored contact lenses, I suppose.

I put them on and looked completely different.

And something happened that surprised me.

Another hope arose in me.

I can be someone else.

Not literally. I know I’m still me.

But suddenly I could see how little it takes to change the way people perceive you.

Even people who see me regularly started treating me a little differently.

I come from North Africa. Most people around me are brunettes. Lots of people have colored eyes, of course, but there is still something about strikingly light or unusual eyes that people associate with tourists and Westerners.

And suddenly people were nicer to me.

They called me beautiful.

It’s a drug, isn’t it?

Validation.

Who hasn’t wanted it?

Who hasn’t been hurt by not receiving it?

I’ve been bullied sometimes. I’ve been called ugly. But I’ve always had big eyes, and people have always told me they were beautiful. It was one of the first things people noticed about me.

And yesterday, at my local bar, people who see me all the time noticed me differently.

They were telling me I was beautiful.

And I loved it.

I don’t like admitting that.

Why is being beautiful so important in society?

Why should it matter?

I don’t think it should.

But it does.

People judge you by it. The halo effect is real. Attractive people can be perceived more positively, and appearance can affect opportunities, relationships, even the way strangers interact with you.

So of course we care.

Of course I care.

I just don’t like that I care.

And I hope to God it’s not too late for me to stop this from becoming an unhealthy obsession.

Because there is a frightening possibility hiding inside all of this:

If changing my eyes makes people treat me differently, what else could I change?

My hair.

My makeup.

My clothes.

My body.

My face.

And where does it stop?

Maybe this is why I’ve spent so much of my life trying to optimize myself.

Maybe I thought that if I could make myself attractive enough, polished enough, symmetrical enough, approachable enough, I could finally stop worrying about being rejected.

But there is no version of a person that is impossible to reject.

There is no outfit that makes you criticism-proof.

No face that makes you comparison-proof.

No amount of beauty that guarantees that you will feel beautiful.

And maybe that’s the part I’m actually trying to learn.

Not how to become beautiful.

How to stop making beauty responsible for making me feel safe.

I think what I’m really looking for is someone to tell me what to wear.

Just relieve me of my misery.

Tell me what to wear every day. Tell me what makeup to put on. Tell me how to do my hair.

I suppose that’s what a stylist is for.

I already have a therapist.

Maybe I need a stylist too.

Maybe I need someone to take some of these decisions away from me while I learn how to make my own.

Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life asking whether something is the right thing to wear.

I want to ask whether I like it.

I want to know what I like.

I want to wear something because I chose it.

I want to look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back.

Not because she’s perfect.

Not because everyone thinks she’s beautiful.

Not because nobody could criticize her.

But because she looks like someone who is actually here.

Someone who woke up.

Someone who made a choice.

Someone who is no longer trying so hard to disappear into the category of “acceptable.”

I think that’s what I’ve been looking for all along.

Not a better face.

Not a better body.

Not even a better style.

Just a version of myself I don’t feel the need to hide.