I do not, can not, never have, maybe I don't wanna believe i'm beautiful. I could stand before you and deliver a thousand different reason why I think I believed that I could never be beautiful and all the reasons I believe/d that I'm not. But I'm not sure any of those reasons would matter. At some point in time they would all involve the blame of someone/something other than me. In fact for me I never understood the desire or the need some of us women have to feel beautiful...that was until someone made me feel beautiful for the first time.
I met my husband by chance on a very cold February night. It was one night and then I moved on about my life thinking that this person who I truly thought was wonderful would never be seen by my eyes again and more than likely would not remember my name when he woke up in the morning. So I went back home that Sunday. Went back about my life, my college, my work, my entire existence. A day went by, then two,then three and the boy I had met in the small coffee shop had simply become a memory of a once upon a time for me. Until I got an email that ended with just five words. "I think you're amazingly beautiful." I had, had boyfriends, I had been hit on (often) but never before that moment had anyone ever said to me "You are beautiful." Sexy, Hot, Fine, and Gorgeous, but never beautiful. It should have sunk into me with those five words and all those days of his deep love how beautiful I was to him but truth be told it never did. Then

she was born. I had never in my life seen anything/anyone so beautiful.

and then she was born and I had never seen anything/anyone in my life so beautiful.
Then today while my children played around the park and other children flocked together like birds and slowly made themselves into their own civilization a woman said to me
"My goodness your children are beautiful."
and I replied
"Thank you, I wish I could take the credit."
and she replied
"Well of course you can. You're their mother aren't you. Where else would they get it?"
and that was that. I smiled and for a moment had no idea how someone is suppose to respond to that. Truth is I didn't. I just smiled and moments later when the kid's games were done, we left. On the drive home we drank hot chocolates and my Birds sang to their music and I thought to myself, perhaps beauty is not something we can be but rather something that just is.