therealljidol week 29: the rent I pay
I grew up knowing what I was. It was an inevitability--when someone gasps and says that they hope you grow up to be smart, when they tell you, faintly, that they think that you are very clever -- when you spend your entire childhood damned with faint praise, how can you not know?
My brother was gorgeous. I remember strangers, telling our parents: your son is so handsome.
He was the youngest, meant to do wonderful things. I was the eldest, supposed to be clever.
When they could only afford to send one of us to university, when the other of us would have to take out loans if we wanted to go, if it was a possibility at all -- did they ask me, what do you want to be, Miranda?
I pretend that they did. It's easier than the truth: that, ugly as I am (was?), they couldn't pretend that I had much of a future.
You have to believe me when I say I don't hate them.
I was -- am -- clever. I'm patient, and good with my hands. I found a job, got myself apprenticed to a welder.
"The torch don't give a damn how ugly you are," he said, when I said something -- in trepidation -- about my looks, interacting with customers. "We'll stick you in the back til you've got it licked, then we'll put you out front."
He'd been handsome, once, before he was scarred in a welding accident, marked for life.
"No one gives a damn, as long as you're competent," he repeated. "Be good at what you do."
And I was -- better than competent. I became an artist.
When the news broke, I was working on the newest installation piece, something a client had commissioned, a giant, fanciful thing of metal and wire that was meant to evoke Greek mythology.
Fitting, I guess: I was bending coils of wire into snakes to make Medusa's hair when the radio suddenly crackled, changing from the public station I'd been listening to into something else, the emergency broadcast system suddenly kicking on, and the announcement that changed everything.
They called you monsters.
From beyond the stars, your bodies were designed for a planet far different from ours. Webbed hands and feet spoke of more water than we could possibly imagine, a completely different evolutionary history.
You came in peace, you said. You'd been watching us for years. You were interested in our culture, our government, our art.
You wanted to talk to artists, in particular, discover how we did the things that we did. Painting was unknown on your planet, though crude drawings were possible, and sculpture was known.
You didn't know about welding. You had made all your parts through casting or different joins, ones I didn't recognize.
They asked for volunteers, and I said I would meet you.
They let me, perhaps because they could tell: I knew what it was to be ugly.
You touched my face, the first time you met me, and told me: of all the humans you had met, I was the one that looked most familiar to you.
My breath hitched in my throat, when you said this: the old familiar hurt rising in me, someone else to call me ugly -- and then you said what I have never forgotten:
One artist always recognizes another.
We didn't talk of welding, or sculpture, or culture, even, really.
We talked about identity and growing up.
When I told you, about the pain of growing up ugly, about being the clever one to my brother's so handsome, you grimaced a little, and said that you understood, what that was like.
"It would have been easier, maybe," I said, "if I'd been born a boy, too. No one cares if you're ugly, as a man -- at least, not as much. But if you're a woman..."
You didn't have different sexes, in your society. You were all what you called agender, neither male nor female, nor both, but something else entirely.
"We've seen your media," you said, hesitant, in response. "We -- I -- cannot empathize, but I can at least start to understand. It is...different, for you."
"There's an expectation," I said. "That you will be pretty, or you'll try to be. There's no room for -- deviation. If you aren't pretty, you are expected to at least make certain concessions. To wear makeup; to dress in a way that's coded as 'feminine'; to remove your body hair and make an attempt to adhere to the beauty standard. I..."
I did all of these things, I wanted to say, despite the fact that I knew they made no difference. Braces had straightened my teeth; years of practice had taught me how to tame my hair. I'd learned to get my eyebrows waxed, my upper lip; how to wield the delicate mascara wand like a weapon, paint my face with foundation and blush.
I'd learned, but it wasn't enough. There were things that makeup and well-fitted clothes couldn't fit, things that nothing short of surgery I could never afford could change. My concave chest, my narrow hips, my too-long torso and too-short legs, my too-large feet and hands, what I had never quite grown into, a nose that was too big, and hooked -- I knew what the score was.
"You have to perform," I said, finally. "You have to admit that you want to be pretty, even if you aren't -- and that's still not enough."
"But you are lovely," you said, after a moment's hesitation. "The things you make are lovely. That should be..."
You bit your lip, then, pausing in thought. I saw the greenish blush rise in your cheeks -- a sign, I thought, of embarrassment, that you'd complimented me.
"They should be ashamed," you said, your voice taut with repressed anger. "Treating you as 'other'. Your parents -- what does your brother do, now? Is he an artist, too? Does he do great works?"
I winced, thinking about Adrian. "He's married," I said. "His wife is beautiful. They have two children -- they've made my parents very happy."
"Does he do great works?" you repeated. "Is he an artist? A great scientist, perhaps? Does he make beauty where he goes?"
"He's the building manager for a tech company," I said. "He's in charge of maintaining the HVAC system -- the, uh, building climate -- as well as ordering needed supplies and making sure that anything broken gets fixed."
I didn't say, he dropped out of college when he got Callie pregnant, because while true, it's unkind. I don't say, he stole money from my mom, and we didn't talk to him for years, not until he paid it all back, or he used to smoke pot every weekend as a teenager, and if he hadn't dropped out, he would have gotten kicked out for dealing out of his dorm. He's grown up, and he's made something of himself. Callie is great, too, and I don't want to tar her with the same brush. I love them both -- but I don't envy them. I wish that I could have been given the chances that he was -- but I don't want to be him, not anymore.
"He is not an artist," you said, your voice low. "He does not create. Why, then, do you think that he is superior, somehow, to you? Why do your parents think this?"
"Because he's handsome," I said. "Because -- that's what we care about, really, even if we shouldn't."
"I see," you said, and you changed the topic to discuss welding with me, the art I did.
I told you the story of Medusa, in those early days. How she was ugly, horrifyingly so, and so I identified with her. "We have something in common, after all..."
"Was she not beautiful before?" you asked. "Did not someone find her beautiful?"
"She and her sisters," I said, and hesitated. "It didn't stop Perseus from lopping off her head."
"But you remember who she was," you said, "what she could do; what her power was. Her curse -- her gift -- has lingered, and her legend is better known, perhaps, than that of him."
You smiled at me, revealing large, flat, greenish teeth. "Never forget: the gift is what is remembered -- the one that has it."
I changed the subject, but I didn't forget what you said.
We continued visiting.
We became friends, you and I. Good friends -- best friends. For the first time in my life, I had a best friend.
We discussed art, welding. I taught you how to use a torch, how to perform the simple joins that I did, soldering two pieces of metal together.
"It looks so easy," you laughed, when I did more complicated welds, tried to show you how to use a torch. "But it's not."
I taught you the fundamentals, what I could teach in a six month period -- because you were leaving, I knew, after six months; going back to your home, returning to what you knew.
When the end came, when you had to leave -- you told me, the gift is what is remembered, and I did my best not to cry.
"I'll be back," you said, but I didn't believe you.
I finished the statue, and I thought about your words. The gift is what is remembered -- and I remembered, just what it was that clients and critics had said about me.
"Talented," came the reviews.
"Incredible with a torch -- a truly gifted artist."
"Her work, while tenacious, invokes a certain fragility that has never before been seen in this medium. Her figures are incredible -- life-like and beautiful while feeling realistic. One almost expects the sculptures Miranda Surta has made to come to life: the singer to take her bow; the artist to lower his brush and turn away from his canvas to greet the observer. Though they are cold metal, they evoke living flesh in a way that few other works can."
None of them had ever mentioned me, that I was unlovely. "Well-acquainted with beauty," one had said, and I had always thought it to be sarcastic, but now...
You made me think of myself in a different light.
I created a show, after you left. I pitched the idea to a gallery owner I knew, and she told me, without hesitation, that she'd love to have me.
"I know your work will sell, Miranda," she said. "There's no question of that."
So I made what I wanted to, worked for over a year to complete everything, in the spare moments I had, working in the shop.
A series of sculptures, based around what your people, what I had learned from you, what I had realized thanks to you, thanks to being seen, finally, not as someone who could be attractive or ugly, but serenely outside the box of pretty and not pretty, outside the conventions that bound me in ordinary life.
"These are your best works yet," said Amanda, when I lugged them to her gallery. "I've never seen..."
"I've never let myself work like this, before," I told her, honestly. "But now..."
I mailed invitations to everyone.
I'd never let my parents see, what it was I did.
They knew I worked as a welder -- that was enough. They assumed I worked on buildings; that I did small odd-jobs to pay my bills. They were relieved I didn't have to ask them for money, the way that Adrian had, at various points in time. I'd never worried them -- not in the ways that he had -- and I'd been moderately successful, by their standards. I'd managed to be an adult, at least, even if they thought I would die unmarried.
I didn't discuss my successes with them, before. I wasn't sure how they would take it -- if they would believe me, or if it would come down to the old question of physical beauty again, the question of was I trying hard enough.
I told them, now. I wanted them to see.
I invited Adrian, too, even though I wasn't sure I wanted to -- even though I wasn't sure how he would take it.
The night of the gallery opening, I wore my coveralls and apron. I pulled my hair back, the way I did when I wore my welding mask, but I didn't wear makeup. I let myself be seen: not as Miranda, trying to be pretty, but as Miranda Surta, the artist. I was more comfortable that way, anyway.
I didn't think my family would come. I was almost certain that they wouldn't -- that they would see this as another way in which I could embarrass myself; embarrass them.
They surprised me by turning up.
"Darling," said my mother, when she saw me in my coveralls. "Your gallery opening. Are you sure...?"
I could tell the way the question was meant from the lilt in her voice. Are you sure you want to be wearing coveralls for this? You look so much like a boy anyway -- aren't they going to mistake you for janitorial staff? Don't you want to try?
"I signed all of my works M. Surta," I said, pointing to the base of one of my sculptures -- the one in which I realized I was an artist; that the art would endure; that it was more important than me, my looks, that I was more than the pitying glances given to me by strangers at the makeup counter. "I want there to be no mistake that it's me, that I'm the one that did all of this."
"That's...a good point," said my mother, faintly. "Well. We'll investigate the show, and then..."
"I'll be around," I said, quietly. "I'm going to talk to Amanda about some of the pieces -- she said that there's already someone interested in buying one of them."
"All right," said my father. "Keep an eye out for Adrian -- he and Callie said they would come."
I saw Adrian walk in. I avoided him, burying myself in conversation with Amanda, with potential buyers.
"Exquisite," said the woman who wanted to buy the sculpture of my meeting with you. "The transformation -- the shift in confidence -- is so clear in this work. Beautiful. Simply beautiful. You have a gift."
I watched Adrian walk from sculpture to sculpture, his arm around Callie's waist, as I listened.
I steeled myself with her words, with what you had said to me, as he and his wife approached, my parents right behind him.
"Miranda," said my brother, his voice shaking. "You're so..."
I steeled mysef. Adrian had never been unkind to me -- not about my looks -- and he'd long ago outgrown what my mother had referred to as his "difficult" phase. He was a good husband, a good father -- and yet I couldn't help but worry, what it was he was going to say.
"Talented," he finished, after a moment. "You..."
"Your work is gorgeous," said Callie. "We had -- we had no idea. Why didn't you tell us, before?"
Because all anyone cared about was my appearance, I thought, uncharitable, but I swallowed this response.
"You never asked," I said. "I would have offered, but..."
My mother looked at me. "I understand why you wore your coveralls, now," she said. "You...you want to be identified, as the artist."
"Yes," I said.
"You are an artist," said my father. "We're all -- "
"We're so proud of you," said my mother, and reached out to hug me.
The gift is what is remembered, you taught me.
Not the artist, with her imperfect face, her imperfect body. Her art.
I know that, now.
I received word a few days ago, from the woman who arranged the initial interviews with your people, that you have come back to visit.
My sculptures are still being shown.
I have so much to tell you.
There is a quote I happen to love a lot, that comes from Erica McKean:
You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
I think about this a lot. Growing up, I was not conventionally attractive, and that grated at me. I had a mother to whom being pretty was the most important thing, what we were supposed to strive for. I don't think I fully gave up on the idea of being 'pretty' until I was in my mid-20s, and it's something I still struggle with -- despite the fact that I am loved and appreciated and remembered for being myself, for my own skills and talents, and not because of what I look like.
Miranda's story came from that: from the acceptance and acknowledgment that you do not have to be lovely, that it is not required -- it's not the 'rent you pay' -- that it can be enough to be you and if you ever are uncomfortable, your own unique talents and abilities are what "justify" your existence.
Thank you for reading.
My brother was gorgeous. I remember strangers, telling our parents: your son is so handsome.
He was the youngest, meant to do wonderful things. I was the eldest, supposed to be clever.
When they could only afford to send one of us to university, when the other of us would have to take out loans if we wanted to go, if it was a possibility at all -- did they ask me, what do you want to be, Miranda?
I pretend that they did. It's easier than the truth: that, ugly as I am (was?), they couldn't pretend that I had much of a future.
You have to believe me when I say I don't hate them.
I was -- am -- clever. I'm patient, and good with my hands. I found a job, got myself apprenticed to a welder.
"The torch don't give a damn how ugly you are," he said, when I said something -- in trepidation -- about my looks, interacting with customers. "We'll stick you in the back til you've got it licked, then we'll put you out front."
He'd been handsome, once, before he was scarred in a welding accident, marked for life.
"No one gives a damn, as long as you're competent," he repeated. "Be good at what you do."
And I was -- better than competent. I became an artist.
When the news broke, I was working on the newest installation piece, something a client had commissioned, a giant, fanciful thing of metal and wire that was meant to evoke Greek mythology.
Fitting, I guess: I was bending coils of wire into snakes to make Medusa's hair when the radio suddenly crackled, changing from the public station I'd been listening to into something else, the emergency broadcast system suddenly kicking on, and the announcement that changed everything.
They called you monsters.
From beyond the stars, your bodies were designed for a planet far different from ours. Webbed hands and feet spoke of more water than we could possibly imagine, a completely different evolutionary history.
You came in peace, you said. You'd been watching us for years. You were interested in our culture, our government, our art.
You wanted to talk to artists, in particular, discover how we did the things that we did. Painting was unknown on your planet, though crude drawings were possible, and sculpture was known.
You didn't know about welding. You had made all your parts through casting or different joins, ones I didn't recognize.
They asked for volunteers, and I said I would meet you.
They let me, perhaps because they could tell: I knew what it was to be ugly.
You touched my face, the first time you met me, and told me: of all the humans you had met, I was the one that looked most familiar to you.
My breath hitched in my throat, when you said this: the old familiar hurt rising in me, someone else to call me ugly -- and then you said what I have never forgotten:
One artist always recognizes another.
We didn't talk of welding, or sculpture, or culture, even, really.
We talked about identity and growing up.
When I told you, about the pain of growing up ugly, about being the clever one to my brother's so handsome, you grimaced a little, and said that you understood, what that was like.
"It would have been easier, maybe," I said, "if I'd been born a boy, too. No one cares if you're ugly, as a man -- at least, not as much. But if you're a woman..."
You didn't have different sexes, in your society. You were all what you called agender, neither male nor female, nor both, but something else entirely.
"We've seen your media," you said, hesitant, in response. "We -- I -- cannot empathize, but I can at least start to understand. It is...different, for you."
"There's an expectation," I said. "That you will be pretty, or you'll try to be. There's no room for -- deviation. If you aren't pretty, you are expected to at least make certain concessions. To wear makeup; to dress in a way that's coded as 'feminine'; to remove your body hair and make an attempt to adhere to the beauty standard. I..."
I did all of these things, I wanted to say, despite the fact that I knew they made no difference. Braces had straightened my teeth; years of practice had taught me how to tame my hair. I'd learned to get my eyebrows waxed, my upper lip; how to wield the delicate mascara wand like a weapon, paint my face with foundation and blush.
I'd learned, but it wasn't enough. There were things that makeup and well-fitted clothes couldn't fit, things that nothing short of surgery I could never afford could change. My concave chest, my narrow hips, my too-long torso and too-short legs, my too-large feet and hands, what I had never quite grown into, a nose that was too big, and hooked -- I knew what the score was.
"You have to perform," I said, finally. "You have to admit that you want to be pretty, even if you aren't -- and that's still not enough."
"But you are lovely," you said, after a moment's hesitation. "The things you make are lovely. That should be..."
You bit your lip, then, pausing in thought. I saw the greenish blush rise in your cheeks -- a sign, I thought, of embarrassment, that you'd complimented me.
"They should be ashamed," you said, your voice taut with repressed anger. "Treating you as 'other'. Your parents -- what does your brother do, now? Is he an artist, too? Does he do great works?"
I winced, thinking about Adrian. "He's married," I said. "His wife is beautiful. They have two children -- they've made my parents very happy."
"Does he do great works?" you repeated. "Is he an artist? A great scientist, perhaps? Does he make beauty where he goes?"
"He's the building manager for a tech company," I said. "He's in charge of maintaining the HVAC system -- the, uh, building climate -- as well as ordering needed supplies and making sure that anything broken gets fixed."
I didn't say, he dropped out of college when he got Callie pregnant, because while true, it's unkind. I don't say, he stole money from my mom, and we didn't talk to him for years, not until he paid it all back, or he used to smoke pot every weekend as a teenager, and if he hadn't dropped out, he would have gotten kicked out for dealing out of his dorm. He's grown up, and he's made something of himself. Callie is great, too, and I don't want to tar her with the same brush. I love them both -- but I don't envy them. I wish that I could have been given the chances that he was -- but I don't want to be him, not anymore.
"He is not an artist," you said, your voice low. "He does not create. Why, then, do you think that he is superior, somehow, to you? Why do your parents think this?"
"Because he's handsome," I said. "Because -- that's what we care about, really, even if we shouldn't."
"I see," you said, and you changed the topic to discuss welding with me, the art I did.
I told you the story of Medusa, in those early days. How she was ugly, horrifyingly so, and so I identified with her. "We have something in common, after all..."
"Was she not beautiful before?" you asked. "Did not someone find her beautiful?"
"She and her sisters," I said, and hesitated. "It didn't stop Perseus from lopping off her head."
"But you remember who she was," you said, "what she could do; what her power was. Her curse -- her gift -- has lingered, and her legend is better known, perhaps, than that of him."
You smiled at me, revealing large, flat, greenish teeth. "Never forget: the gift is what is remembered -- the one that has it."
I changed the subject, but I didn't forget what you said.
We continued visiting.
We became friends, you and I. Good friends -- best friends. For the first time in my life, I had a best friend.
We discussed art, welding. I taught you how to use a torch, how to perform the simple joins that I did, soldering two pieces of metal together.
"It looks so easy," you laughed, when I did more complicated welds, tried to show you how to use a torch. "But it's not."
I taught you the fundamentals, what I could teach in a six month period -- because you were leaving, I knew, after six months; going back to your home, returning to what you knew.
When the end came, when you had to leave -- you told me, the gift is what is remembered, and I did my best not to cry.
"I'll be back," you said, but I didn't believe you.
I finished the statue, and I thought about your words. The gift is what is remembered -- and I remembered, just what it was that clients and critics had said about me.
"Talented," came the reviews.
"Incredible with a torch -- a truly gifted artist."
"Her work, while tenacious, invokes a certain fragility that has never before been seen in this medium. Her figures are incredible -- life-like and beautiful while feeling realistic. One almost expects the sculptures Miranda Surta has made to come to life: the singer to take her bow; the artist to lower his brush and turn away from his canvas to greet the observer. Though they are cold metal, they evoke living flesh in a way that few other works can."
None of them had ever mentioned me, that I was unlovely. "Well-acquainted with beauty," one had said, and I had always thought it to be sarcastic, but now...
You made me think of myself in a different light.
I created a show, after you left. I pitched the idea to a gallery owner I knew, and she told me, without hesitation, that she'd love to have me.
"I know your work will sell, Miranda," she said. "There's no question of that."
So I made what I wanted to, worked for over a year to complete everything, in the spare moments I had, working in the shop.
A series of sculptures, based around what your people, what I had learned from you, what I had realized thanks to you, thanks to being seen, finally, not as someone who could be attractive or ugly, but serenely outside the box of pretty and not pretty, outside the conventions that bound me in ordinary life.
"These are your best works yet," said Amanda, when I lugged them to her gallery. "I've never seen..."
"I've never let myself work like this, before," I told her, honestly. "But now..."
I mailed invitations to everyone.
I'd never let my parents see, what it was I did.
They knew I worked as a welder -- that was enough. They assumed I worked on buildings; that I did small odd-jobs to pay my bills. They were relieved I didn't have to ask them for money, the way that Adrian had, at various points in time. I'd never worried them -- not in the ways that he had -- and I'd been moderately successful, by their standards. I'd managed to be an adult, at least, even if they thought I would die unmarried.
I didn't discuss my successes with them, before. I wasn't sure how they would take it -- if they would believe me, or if it would come down to the old question of physical beauty again, the question of was I trying hard enough.
I told them, now. I wanted them to see.
I invited Adrian, too, even though I wasn't sure I wanted to -- even though I wasn't sure how he would take it.
The night of the gallery opening, I wore my coveralls and apron. I pulled my hair back, the way I did when I wore my welding mask, but I didn't wear makeup. I let myself be seen: not as Miranda, trying to be pretty, but as Miranda Surta, the artist. I was more comfortable that way, anyway.
I didn't think my family would come. I was almost certain that they wouldn't -- that they would see this as another way in which I could embarrass myself; embarrass them.
They surprised me by turning up.
"Darling," said my mother, when she saw me in my coveralls. "Your gallery opening. Are you sure...?"
I could tell the way the question was meant from the lilt in her voice. Are you sure you want to be wearing coveralls for this? You look so much like a boy anyway -- aren't they going to mistake you for janitorial staff? Don't you want to try?
"I signed all of my works M. Surta," I said, pointing to the base of one of my sculptures -- the one in which I realized I was an artist; that the art would endure; that it was more important than me, my looks, that I was more than the pitying glances given to me by strangers at the makeup counter. "I want there to be no mistake that it's me, that I'm the one that did all of this."
"That's...a good point," said my mother, faintly. "Well. We'll investigate the show, and then..."
"I'll be around," I said, quietly. "I'm going to talk to Amanda about some of the pieces -- she said that there's already someone interested in buying one of them."
"All right," said my father. "Keep an eye out for Adrian -- he and Callie said they would come."
I saw Adrian walk in. I avoided him, burying myself in conversation with Amanda, with potential buyers.
"Exquisite," said the woman who wanted to buy the sculpture of my meeting with you. "The transformation -- the shift in confidence -- is so clear in this work. Beautiful. Simply beautiful. You have a gift."
I watched Adrian walk from sculpture to sculpture, his arm around Callie's waist, as I listened.
I steeled myself with her words, with what you had said to me, as he and his wife approached, my parents right behind him.
"Miranda," said my brother, his voice shaking. "You're so..."
I steeled mysef. Adrian had never been unkind to me -- not about my looks -- and he'd long ago outgrown what my mother had referred to as his "difficult" phase. He was a good husband, a good father -- and yet I couldn't help but worry, what it was he was going to say.
"Talented," he finished, after a moment. "You..."
"Your work is gorgeous," said Callie. "We had -- we had no idea. Why didn't you tell us, before?"
Because all anyone cared about was my appearance, I thought, uncharitable, but I swallowed this response.
"You never asked," I said. "I would have offered, but..."
My mother looked at me. "I understand why you wore your coveralls, now," she said. "You...you want to be identified, as the artist."
"Yes," I said.
"You are an artist," said my father. "We're all -- "
"We're so proud of you," said my mother, and reached out to hug me.
The gift is what is remembered, you taught me.
Not the artist, with her imperfect face, her imperfect body. Her art.
I know that, now.
I received word a few days ago, from the woman who arranged the initial interviews with your people, that you have come back to visit.
My sculptures are still being shown.
I have so much to tell you.
There is a quote I happen to love a lot, that comes from Erica McKean:
You Don’t Have to Be Pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked “female”.
I think about this a lot. Growing up, I was not conventionally attractive, and that grated at me. I had a mother to whom being pretty was the most important thing, what we were supposed to strive for. I don't think I fully gave up on the idea of being 'pretty' until I was in my mid-20s, and it's something I still struggle with -- despite the fact that I am loved and appreciated and remembered for being myself, for my own skills and talents, and not because of what I look like.
Miranda's story came from that: from the acceptance and acknowledgment that you do not have to be lovely, that it is not required -- it's not the 'rent you pay' -- that it can be enough to be you and if you ever are uncomfortable, your own unique talents and abilities are what "justify" your existence.
Thank you for reading.