Judging By Appearances

If you know me, then you know that one of the most traumatic things that happened to me in my life was that I had a perm. For like 6 years.

Yes, I had a giant, curly triangle on my head that my mother imposed on me from the ages of 11-17. Luckily, she wasn't a hypocrite as she had one as well, so at least I have that excuse--I didn't choose the perm, the perm (by way of the will of the Jean) chose me.

On top of that, I was overweight. My friends from high school say they don't remember me as being overweight, just really stocky and athletic, but Virgo runs in the family on my mom's side, so I was always being told that I was fat and needed to lose weight. It totally gave me a complex so I spent most of my life on a diet, self-imposed or mother-imposed.

By the time I hit senior year of high school, I'd had enough and cut most of my hair off, growing it out again straight. My mom told me, your face is too big...you'll never look good with straight hair, but I didn't care. I couldn't deal with another year of having a perm. And I've never looked back.

This is what I mean when I say my childhood had been character-building. Because my mom and I are so alike, she often had trouble recognizing me as an autonomous being, and to this day, even though we are close like sisters, our biggest conflicts arise out of my needing her to recognize that she doesn't determine my life. But needless to say, when you have a perm and are overweight, you struggle with confidence, and when you struggle with confidence, you don't exactly welcome the center stage. So I spent the first stages of my life observing people and life from the sidelines, learning the importance of being a good, kind person, and dreaming of the day when I could have a steamy clandestine affair with a hot Hollywood actor, because I no longer looked like me.

Last month when I saw Rie, we were driving to dinner and she was asking me about my childhood. The fact I had a perm has always been a running joke because I'd cut it off by the time I got to college so she's never seen me in a perm, but she and Eric had once made a joke that my head looked like an eggplant and I never let them live it down. I told her that because I wasn't attractive, because I had a lot of upsetting things going on at home (my parents were always fighting because of stress from running a company together and my brother's issues), and because I had issues at school (I seemed to always have conflict with groups of girls who liked to gang up on me and give me trouble), I wasn't trusting of people or the world. I saw the world from a very negative and angry place, one that always seemed to sabotage me just as I found a way to feel okay about myself. When I realized I was good at sports, a girl who was jealous of me (a girl, in fact, I had taken a slap for by a girl on another team when I came to defend her) told the varsity softball team that I was telling people that I was the best player ever to come out of the school, so one day they surrounded me outside the locker room to beat me up. My basketball coach saw but pretended she didn't because she didn't want to get involved. This guy, Robert, who will always be an angel to me because of this, broke it up and I remember crying in his bear arms as he held me. Later, my dad went to talk to the coach who said he couldn't let me on the varsity team because I "didn't seem to get along with the other girls." Here I was, being scouted by college teams, and he wouldn't even let me onto the varsity team which had come in last place in the league, because he couldn't deal with teenage girl drama. So I was relegated to the junior varsity team where at least I won the Most Valuable Player award to salvage the humiliation, and despite my dreams of the Olympics, I quit the sport after that season.

My parents were having major problems. There were explosive arguments. Once, literally over spilled milk, my dad went into a rampage, throwing things at me. By then, I had my driver's license so I left, sleeping in my car outside of motels, showering at the gym in the morning but still going to school. I was a good kid; I didn't have the guts to cut class. I guess because my parents thought I'd run away, they contacted the school and found out I was still showing up for class. I remember the day I got pulled out of class and led into a small office. This police officer came in and rather than asking if I had trouble at home, he yelled at me about what I planned to do with my life, if I knew what happens to "kids like me," if I planned to throw away my life by being irresponsible and disrespectful, that he knew kids like me that thought life was a joke, but he was here to tell me I better shape up or else. It sounded like a canned speech, one he probably gave to every trouble student that came through, but the fact was, I was an honor student, I'd never been in trouble before, I'd already been accepted into the honors college of a top school so I clearly wasn't throwing my life away, and again, nobody ASKED why I left home. I remember crying through that whole speech, and having to sit through the rest of my day in classes forcing myself not to cry when really, I just wanted to disappear.

The summer before senior year, after I'd cut off that god-forsaken perm, I worked at the local gym. I wanted to work in the cafe (one of my favorite joys in life--feeding people), but they assigned me to work in the locker room. Apparently, it's notorious for being the worst job that only recent immigrants take it, but because I didn't know better and was just happy to work at the gym, I accepted it.

My job was to keep the locker room clean. The first week on the job, there was someone who kept shitting in the showers. I mean, I don't know if they were giving themselves enemas or what, but it was explosive...it was all over the walls. And I had to clean it up because it was my job, so I did. I remember telling my parents about it and they were really upset and told me to quit. But I figured, this is the kind of thing that keeps me humble and I was happy to be making money, so I stayed on even though it was awful (to this day, I still think the shitting was someone who worked for my parents and was getting back at them by fucking with me). I met this guy who worked at the gym and he was a really nice guy. He started leaving me really sweet notes and we went out a few times. I was really shy...I was 17 and never had a boyfriend. He was my first kiss.

Then one day, a month later, this other girl who worked at the gym said she wanted to talk to me and pulled me out to the parking lot. She told me that the guy was an asshole and was never going to tell me, so she had to. He had a girlfriend...someone he'd been dating for years. He was just messing around with me.

That was devastating. And because I'm kind of timid in confronting people sometimes, I never told him I knew. I just stopped hanging out with him. But I remember being really depressed for a while, quitting to work at a restaurant. I think it must have had a really deep effect on me, because I went through college without dating, not having my first real boyfriend until after I'd graduated. There's an urban legend at Michigan that if a virgin were to ever graduate from our school, these two stone pumas outside our library would roar. When I graduated, I remember specifically going by the library to check out the pumas to see if they had come to life.

So many of these incidences made me not feel very connected with people or the world. I kept myself self-contained, and didn't really trust people to have good intentions unless they proved themselves. I felt like I was really angry and bitter, all through college, at least that was my memory of it, but that night in the car with Rie when I told her some of this, she was surprised.

"Didn't you think I was an angry person?" I asked her.

"I had no idea," she said. "I've always thought really highly of you, Julia."

I remember turning my head to look out the window, tears stinging my eyes. I'm so lucky to have a friend like Rie. It's so much about perception...I must have been in a lot of pain growing up, and it clouded my perception of the world, but I was probably still a nice person because that's who I am inherently. But I couldn't see it. I couldn't feel it. I remember when my 2nd year college roommate Michele got married, I went to her wedding and her sister (whom I've never met) came rushing up to me.

"So you're Julia!" she said. She gave me a big warm hug like I'd been a family friend for a lifetime. "We're so thankful to you. Michele had a really rough time her first years of college, and if it hadn't been for you, she probably would have dropped out. You mean so much to her." I was shocked. I remember late night conversations with Michele. But I didn't remember being any kind of guiding light or rock of support. Just feeling lost myself, and Michele listening to me. I guess that's perception. I guess I was feeling so bad about myself, I never saw that I was important to people.

I told Rie that I would have never dreamed that I would one day be in the place I am today. I could have never imagined that someday I would have the confidence to navigate this world the way I do now, to go after the things I wanted. Most of all, I would have never, ever, ever, ever, ever imagined that I could be good-looking.

"Really?" she said. "I can't believe that."

"Never," I said. "I don't really like to look at myself in the mirror. Sometimes I look at myself and I can't believe this person I'm looking at. But I don't put too much attention into it, because any day now, it could change again. So I just keep focusing on what I know, that I'm a good person who wants to do good in this world."

Today, as I was walking home, I saw a red-haired guy with glasses and a laptop bag hurrying down the stairs towards me. When he looked up at me, he stopped in his tracks.

"Wow," he said. "You look really fantastic today."

I laughed and thanked him, and he smiled, sincerely. It was a really nice thing for him to say, and I really appreciated it.

I think this is why I don't understand this pervasive feeling in Seattle. It doesn't happen all of the time, like the interaction today was a nice one. But I also have these experiences where people are kind of rude to me without getting to know me because they assume I'm a bitch. And they seem surprised when I'm not, and they'll mention, "You're nicer than I thought you would be. Most girls like you are usually bitchy."

"Like you" ?

What does that mean?

I hate people who think that I must take things for granted, because of the things I have now, because of how easy life seems to come to me.

What they don't know is, everything I have, I've earned. For years, I was judged for being ugly. Now I'm being judged for not being ugly. For years I was disregarded for what I didn't have. Now I'm being disrespected for what I do have. Sometimes, I feel like with small-minded people, you can't win. All it shows is how judgmental they are, how insecure they feel about themselves, and it reminds me why it doesn't matter what other people think. I want to surround myself with people who appreciate me for the core of what I am--a good person with a kind heart. I don't give a shit what smaller people try to project onto me. Because that's their garbage, not mine.