SELF PORTRAIT

in college, my humanities professor asked us to make a self portrait. nothing fancy, she said, but just try to illustrate ourselves at how we perceive ourself.

which of course got me to thinking of how i see myself, and more importantly, how others perceive the ME that i see.

i remember staring hard at the blank white page in front of me and just trying to come up with something good, i was never much of an artist and i was bent on trying to capture the good side of myself.

i took the assignment home. i had to think about it.

i went home, sat in front of my mirror and just started staring at myself. my dark curly hair was a complete mess, coz driving around in the hot and humid un-airconditioned car around campus made me look like a madman....my eyes had bags underneath...i had a pimple growing on my cheek...heck! it wasn't the best assignment, come to think about it.

one assignment magnified my physical flaws times 100. i felt like i was under a magnifying glass. damn, what a nice self portrait i'm trying to make!

i remember saying to myself, 'i don't care'...so i drew.

i drew myself how i wanted myself to be. i didn't draw how i was at the time, but how i wanted to BE at the time. i was a far cry from self contentment...but i passed my humanities assignment anyway.

fast forward -

right now, five years later, i've realized i've had it all wrong. if some college professor would ask me right now to make a self portrait, i'd get a black marker and draw a big question mark. not because i don't know how to describe my present self, but because i can never describe myself in just ONE picture.

i'm still the same insecure girl i was before...i am still haunted by the physical things in me that i find 'wrong'...but at the same time right now, i am a girl confident in what i have. it's normal to want...to dream for something more...to hope for something better for us...BUT realizing that what we have is maybe something that another person wishes for, is enough for me to realize that maybe the self portrait i made five years ago was actually the ME i wanted to convey.

maybe i didn't make her up, the girl in the self portrait in my humanities class. maybe she was always in me. the beautiful, confident and flawless girl i've always wanted to be. maybe i had a glimpse of the girl behind the bad hair day, eye bags and the pimples...

kudos to the old me...for even though i never realized what i was trying to draw...maybe in the back of my mind i was hoping i was ALREADY the person in the picture.