(no subject)
My whole life, everyone has always said, "Wow! You look just like your mother!" and "You have your mother's face!" I didn't think much of this until after I started puberty. I'd been away from my mother long enough that the first sight of her was a shock to me. Let me, explain. My mother? Not an attractive woman. Not in any sense of the world. She was a deranged child, trapped in the body of an extremely overweight woman. She had no sense of self-control, discipline, the existence of other people as real, feeling creatures... She lived her life on the edge, and the drugs and years of over-indulgence showed on her features. It was etched in the blotchy pale of her skin, the dark circles and the lines around her eyes. The idea that I'm going to grow up to look like -that- has always given me a certain terror.
But I never doubted it for a moment. When I look in the mirror, all I can see is my mother's face. The roundness of my little girl face, the narrowness of my lips, the slightly too-wide button shape of my nose and how -wide- my jaw is. All I see is my mother's face, with little traits that come from my father - like the dip at the bottom of the bridge of my nose. I get -that- from my father. And the acne, damn him. The only feature I've ever been able to see as definitely mine are my eyes - they're a sort of sideways tear-drop shape that I've always found rather pleasing and exotic. The whites of my eyes are blue-tinted, the pupils are about twice the standard size, and the irises change colours. I've got neat eyes and I like 'em. The rest of it - yeech! Best to avoid looking at it and make the best of things. I always cut and style my hair so that some of it hangs to frames my face and hides my chubby cheeks. I face the world with my chin tilted slightly downwards, peering up through my eyelashes to elongate my features . Hell, I -hide- my face religiously and unless I'm around people I'm really comfortable with, I never grin because my full smile widens my cheeks horribly (Yes, Mr Man. Remember when you remarked about liking how honest my smile is? You have -no- idea how much it cost me to give you nothing but honest smiles, damnit). I tend to look away and then look at people sidelong because the 3/4s view flatters my round little face...
All these silly little tricks! And because I hate my face I walk around with my eyes downcast, on my feet. The only time I hold my head high is when I'm in public with a crowd, doing the Sparkling Arienna Charisma thing... (Yes, I know. It's silly to be painfully shy when your social persona is an attention-whoring storyteller. Lemme alone) So... Where am I going with this? Well. I've started the long, slow path to telling people The Story, about my life and my past and the people I've known... and in there, I'm starting to share pictures of my mother. And for the first time in my life, I showed someone a picture of my mother, saying something off-handed like "Isn't the resemblance horrifying?" And he replied "Uh... I don't see it."
Being me, I've gone around showing more people the pictures of my mother and gotten more and more "This is your mother? Really?" responses. Which... has allowed me to start taking some cautious runs on the mirror. (The fact that I really do have to sneak up on the mirror, take a quick look, run away... and then come back later to look closer is as sad as it is hilarious)
And holy shit. o.O I have no idea who's face -that- is. The cheekbones are surprisingly high and broad, my jaw is not so wide as I remember and if my chin isn't pointed or delicate enough to make that feminine heart-shaped look, the cleft isn't nearly so pronounced as I remember. There are dimples in the corners of my smile and my eyes are surprisingly large, if darker than I think of them. There are angles and lines in my face... I really -don't- look like a chubby-cheeked little girl anymore. That's the part that surprises me the most. Following in the footsteps of my father and the rest of his family, I expected to stay cherub-like and young for decades, while my eyes aged before their time. And... yes, my eyes are older than they ought to me. More haunted than I'd like... But my face isn't a child or a cherub's face. This is the face of a young woman, damn it. An adolescent very nearly on the edge of adulthood.
This is a picture of my mother. This is a picture of my mother and me as an early teen
These are not pictures of me. I'm someone else entirely.