Guess What? I'm Adorable!

This is a picture of me right now. I am not wearing makeup. I did not edit this photo. I don't have any filters like with Instagram because in order to have that I would require a smartphone. I have a dumb phone and a webcam, with which I take selfies these days. It is twelve twenty-three am on the morning (night) of May 25 (May 24). I just got home from a party/gathering/game night deal at a friend's house.

You can't really tell, but I look pretty okay. These are the standards by which I judge "pretty okay":

1. Acne. If I'm having spots on my face, it is automatically downgraded. This is because blemishes, in my opinion, are unsightly and also are signs of stress and hormones. (I think this is probably why people weren't really interested in me in high school, because zits scream "SHE'S CRAZY AND HORMONAL AND WANTS YOUR BABIES MORE THAN SHE WANTS YOU," which is not a healthy attitude to have in high school unless, apparently, you're a creepily overmature junior in high school who falls in love with coincidentally good-looking vampires and werewolves because let's admit it, the imbecile is on both Team Edward and Team Jacob, the UST in that series is unrealistic.) Here in Provo, it automatically becomes fine, which I like because it means I'm free to lust after everybody's babies without feeling guilty about it, a thing that has not happened since I was twelve.)
2. Feeling fat. I have been exercising more often, by which I mean occasionally instead of never. Superwholockmarauder and I have been doing pretty well on this front. I also go to sleep at fairly reasonable hours, weekends excepted, and I eat well and eat regularly. As a result, I feel thinner and prettier than I usually do.
3. Outfit. I have had major clothes envy of basically everyone I know since I was fourteen. It was partially my fault, because I was not proactive in telling my mother what kinds of clothes I liked, and partially my mother's fault, because even though I am a Mormon and therefore already did not wear revealing (read: fashionable) clothing, my mother liked to take it a step further. And really, saying it's her fault is not accurate. I should say it's to her credit, because I spent my high school career decently clothed and covered and uncomfortable when I was not clothed and covered. And I'm not judging you if you like to show a little skin. I'm just severely uncomfortable with it. But I've learned how to pick things I like and also that I have plenty of T-shirts and I don't need anymore, thank you.
4. Hair. It is a truly miraculous day if my hair is cooperating. I have absurdly thick hair. It's very pretty and whenever I let people play with it, which is whenever I have the opportunity, they compliment me on how soft and pretty and clean it is. It's a struggle to keep it that way, because frankly if I didn't have remnants of self-disgust at my first-grade haircut, which was basically a pixie cut, I would just chop the whole mess off and have done with it.

And that list, I know, is this combination of "ew, I am the grossest of God's creations" and "look at me, I'm the most beautiful thing to ever exist and if you say otherwise, I will punch you in the face with my gorgeous fist." But the thing is, that's how we've been raised. We, as women, have been early trained to hate our bodies and wish we looked like the unrealistically anorexic models on the magazine covers.

So this is me, and I am breaking every rule I know of in whatever rules there are, by profoundly stating that I, all things considered, am kind of hot.

No, really. I'm not saying it to make you relieved that I'm finally accepting of my self-image or whatever. I still hate the way I look because it's me. But objectively speaking, I am a babe.

Maybe you're scrolling back up to squint at that picture and decide whether you agree with me or not. Maybe you're suspicious that this is just a way of fishing for compliments. It's really not. I don't care if you think I'm pretty or not. I literally have stopped caring about whether other people think I am attractive. When I get up in the morning to get dressed to go to work at the bookstore, I have this dress code to follow. I am allowed to wear dresses, blouses, skirts, dress pants, nice jeans and only BYU logo T-shirts. Nice casual, basically. And I do. I wear nice casual to work. But other than that standard, I have stopped looking at the mirror and saying, "Man, I wish I looked like such and such so that other people would think I was pretty," and I have started saying, "I am going to look like this today because it will make me feel good about myself and really happy with my body."

Sometimes I look at me as a whole, usually very close up to the mirror, and I look and I see, "Oh, look, you have five thousand zits and your pores are huge and your skin is not uniformly one color under the blemishes and your hair is tangly and weird and what is your mouth even doing right now." But then I back up a few steps, because first of all, the only person who's ever gonna be that close to my face as I am when I stare in the mirror like that is hopefully gonna be about to kiss me, and I kind of doubt they'll be looking at my pores or my zits if they have the inclination to kiss me in the first place. So I look, and I notice that I have some really nice facial features.

• I have nice eyes. They are hazel. Kind of hazel-brown. There's some green in there, kind of an olive shade, and right around the pupil in the middle they're actually gold and around the edges they're dark green. You guys, my eyes belong on an elf or something. Or me, because they're just that awesome.
• I have an adorable little nose. Some people save up money and get nose jobs. I have this really cute little nose that's more than a button but doesn't look like a parrot's beak, and it doesn't curve or anything, it's just there, this adorable little nose on my face.
• I have a nice little mouth. I hate my smile, and I will tell anybody this. But I have nice lips, kind of full, which I get from my mom, and they're a nice color that looks nice on my face without lipstick or other coloring. And my teeth are getting whiter because I've been working hard on them, and I've never had terribly crooked teeth, and I just like my mouth.

And then I back up a little further, and I see the rest of me, too.

• I really do have nice hair. It's an okay color, and it's soft and thick and pretty and clean and people love to play with it. It's got nothing on the Beauty, of course, who has the sort of magnificent mane about which the troubadors sang- but I have nice hair. And it's even nicer when I don't pull it all back into my usual librarian's bun, which is generally what I do with it. And if I am hanging out with you in person, you already have my permission to play with my hair.
• My neck is long and fair-skinned like my face and it's the right size for my head.
• I have these awesomely broad shoulders that on someone skinnier would look terrible but which lend strength to my body because I don't look fat as much as I do womanly. It's great.
• I have an absolutely average body. Like, it's not an hourglass or anything, but the shape is generally thinner around the waist and broader at the chest and hips. Yay for being totally normal!
• I have hips and thighs, which is going to be so much easier on me for childbearing than it will be for thinner girls. And believe me, I plan to have babies. Like, four of them. But not all at the same time.
• My legs aren't as jiggly as they used to be. I have calf muscle now.
• I have cute little feet. The Beauty's feet are bigger than mine. She often tells me how cute my feet are. I always feel really inordinately pleased by this.

So even when I don't like what I see as a whole, I look at me and I have to admit to myself: "Dang, Abramson. You rock that body. You have your cute little feet and you leave your hair down and you dress like your usual cross between hipster and Amish woman. You work it, because you are a fine-looking woman, and you didn't even have to stick your finger down your throat or take diet pills to get that way."

As you might know, I get depressed sometimes. Not much lately, because I have pills that make me happy and stuff. But sometimes I get depressed and it's not that I think I'm ugly or anything- I just stop caring about what I look like because who cares? Nothing matters, nobody gives a crap, it's just me alone in this world and if I don't care why should anybody else? Nobody's even looking.

And somewhere in my brain a part of me noted, "That attitude is a lot healthier than the one you had of body image when you were in high school, Abramson."

And I considered it, as I recovered- and I decided I wanted to keep that emotion, or lack of it. To not care what anybody else was thinking, and to do things to please myself and not the proletariat.

Is what you look like important? Yeah, if you're dressing to impress others. But then, when they look at you, all they're going to see is you anxious to impress them. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes it's not.

Of course what you look like is important. But the only person whose opinion you should be really worried about what you look like is your own opinion. Because if you hate the way you look but you look that way to make other people happy, then you need to be a little more assertive about your needs and desires, and others could stand to be a little less aggressive about what you look like, because that is literally the least important part of any relationship.

I'm not saying that I'm never going to think I'm ugly ever again in my whole life. It could yet happen. I have no idea what I'm going to be thinking about five years from now. But for the moment, I have recognized that I am really kind of attractive, and that that makes me happy and that is literally the end of the story.

I Work At A Bookstore Now; Bookstores Are Cool

The above is a crude approximation of a quote from Doctor Who, where the Doctor is actually talking about how he wears bowties. Or fezzes. Or Stetsons. Or whatever it is he's wearing on any given moment since his eleventh reincarnation. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go watch Doctor Who. You will not regret this decision.)

My job history has been largely unsatisfying. In the first few months of my blogging I liked to complain about the one girl I babysat, but really, it went downhill from there. (Just goes to show what gratitude can do for a girl, huh?) After the babysitting jobs and the gradual failure of my job working for my old bishop (which finally just kind of stopped in January), I went out to Provo and managed to snag myself a job making sandwiches at five a.m. It was by no means an ideal job- I knew that going in- but I already had a food handler's permit, left over from when I worked at BYU Concessions during my freshman year of college. So I would get up at five-thirty, pull on clothes and a jacket, and walk a couple blocks to the Creamery Outlet and I would go in and put on a special coat of special (meaning a white lab-like coat) over my regular coat and a hairnet (which I always put on over my hair but under my hat) and then plastic gloves over my real ones and then I would go into a large fridge and make sandwiches.

I thought it was okay. I liked making sandwiches. That was fine. It smelled nice and I could come home and shower before I had class.

Yeah, no. Getting up that early began to take its toll on me. I was sleeping in class, barely functioning. I was like a robot. I was not thriving. The thing is, and I didn't realize this until fairly recently thanks to my beautiful and intelligent mother, is that I have always required a lot of sleep, like more than eight hours a night, to function properly. I was sleeping through the night before I was a year old, probably before I was six months old. My mother has stories about how she would wake up in the night and panic because she thought I was dead because I wasn't crying but I was actually just totally conked out. (Dream baby, right?) So I was getting like five, sometimes six hours a night. And it didn't help that I was neglecting my homework because I thought I was getting into a relationship which turned out to be based on a pack of lies and a dog in the manger. And my body and mind just said, "NO." So I started looking for a new job right around late November, early December.

I then was able to grab a job at the Creamery on Ninth East. Still food, but great, because I didn't have to get up until eight on the days I worked and I only worked three days a week! Great, right? It was a fun job. I would walk there in the morning, put on my awesome shirt and a baseball cap, wash my hands, and start setting up the restaurant part of the Creamery for the crew who came and did the actual cooking. I got ice cream for people. I told them regretfully, "Sorry, the grill's not open until eleven." I sliced onions and scooped raw meat into a metal tin. It was a largely independent job, based on routines which I performed admirably. I've always been good at following a set pattern, if I do say so myself. (This is why I get nervous with strangers. More on that later.)

But I wasn't satisfied with this job because I knew that I was going to have to start working regular restaurant hours in the summer, and my brain objected to that because as much as I like food and hamburgers and things, I didn't want to make them. Grease perfuming my hair and clothes and high temperatures and stressful shouting and running around and making food- all things I'm not okay with because of my mental issues, which like to shut me down when I have to deal with those things.

So I started applying for jobs again. My good friend Fairy-Tale Princess helped me out with my resume one night, when the two of us and Superwholockmarauder watched a fantastic movie called The American President. (It's not about Obama and it's an adorable romantic comedy-drama thing.) And I started sending that thing out and around.

And then I looked on the BYU employment website and I saw it.

General Book Sales Clerk at BYU Bookstore. 7:45-11:00 am shift.

And my whole brain started screaming: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH SARAH SARAH SARAH YOU SHOULD APPLY BECAUSE YOU CAN WORK IN A BOOKSTORE AND AAAAAAAAHHHH YOU COULD WORK IN A FRICKIN' BOOKSTORE LIKE OH MY WIZARD GOODNESS WHAT IS GOING ONNNNN IN THIS WORLD?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?"

I kid you not, that's what it sounded like in my head.

So I sent in my resume and application and cover letter and things, and I made sure to sound perky and happy and skippy even though I'm not really a perky happy skippy person all the time and I mentioned that I really, really love books and that I want to work with them forever.

And then I was actually proactive, and I called back a few days later, and said, "Hi! My name is, uh, Sarah, and I was wondering about the status of my job application which I put in on Thursday!"

My voice, in case you were wondering, goes up an octave in pitch when I'm talking to strangers. And I did nearly forget my name.

"Oh, of course! Well, call back on Monday and ask for *insert name of manager here*, okay? He won't be in until Monday."

It was encouraging. I was excited. So on Monday I woke up at nine literally so I could call and ask for Manager.

"Hi, Manager, my name is Sarah, and I was wondering about my job application status for the general book clerk position..."

And I kind of trailed off because males of any sort intimidate me.

And this slightly gruff but very gentle-sounding older man says in my ear, "Yes, we'll get to those later today. I was at a funeral this weekend and I didn't have time to work on them, and if we select you for an interview, we'll call you back, okay?"

"Sure thing! Thank you so much! Have a nice day! Bye!" And then I hang up, relieved, because talking on the phone is nervewracking. It really is.

And I waited. And waited. And later that evening, I got a call and they said, "Hey, can you come in for an interview tomorrow at two?"

And I said, "YES! YES I can, absolutely, thank you so much, thank you," because I am a sap. And I went in the next day and a girl named *insert name of supervisor here* and this nice older guy named Manager, who I had talked to on the phone, came in and asked me some questions. And then they asked me the last book I had read, and I said The Host by Stephenie Meyer, because it was true at the time. And then they said, "Okay, we'll let you know."

By now I had this mad fantasy of a time where I would get up at six and shower and I would buy a travel mug and make herbal tea for myself every morning and take it to work and I would feel grown-up and responsible and hipstery because of taking a travel mug full of a warm liquid typically associated with the British and with intellectuals and drinking it in a bookstore where I worked.

That fantasy was crushed when I got an email that very evening that said, "Sorry, but you have not been selected for this position."

And I cried. I did. I laid in bed and I cried for a good half-hour and I was really bummed out because I wasn't quite done with finals and I didn't get this job and I really wanted it and I didn't want to do restaurant shifts at the Creamery every other day because I would feel perennially gross and now I would have to. And I prayed and asked God if he could please make things okay because I was trying my hardest to improve my life and recover from the mental issues that had been plaguing me all semester, the mental issues that sometimes made it impossible for me to get out of bed in the mornings, the mental issues that made me seriously consider stepping in front of a bus or downing a bottle of ibuprofen, the mental issues that sent me to bed crying uncontrollably because that was all I could do when I couldn't control anything else.

And the next day I had my last final and therapy and an appointment with a psychiatrist because of mental issues and I had to run around from place to place, and I was about to get a job interview set up at another place, so I was tired and annoyed and feeling crazy, and I walked out of my therapy session and checked my phone and there was a new voicemail.

And I listened to it and it was from the bookstore and they wanted me to call them back.

So I did.

And they offered me a job- not from 7:45 am to 11 am every day, but from 10 am to 1 pm every day.

And it was an answer to my prayers.

And then they told me the story of how I was hired.

I was second in line for the job. The girl who got the original job is my coworker. She's very nice. Supervisor and Manager, who had interviewed me, found out that they could hire just one more person at the last minute. And they picked me. And the only reason that I was in second place, apparently, was because I was reading The Host, and Manager disapproves of SMeyer because of her inane style- but the girl who got the original job was reading Wuthering Heights, and Supervisor disapproves of Wuthering Heights (and so do I, but I understand their viewpoint that it is higher quality literature than The Host). And I did mention that I thought that The Host was worlds better than the Twilight books because a) it is and b) it has some interesting psychological stuff that other sci-fi/fantasy hasn't really considered before, at least not in a whole book to itself. And Supervisor said that she really liked my resume and stuff and that she really wanted to hire me and was sad when they couldn't hire me and then was really happy when they decided they could hire me. And I was happy too.

Basically, I was hired on the basis of a miracle. This is how I know God answers prayers- when I need something and want something but am not sure I'm going to get it, he's either going to say "yes, here you go," or "not yet, but at some point" or "no, but you're going to be grateful for it later." This one was definitely a "not yet" and I am so glad that it was, because if I hadn't had that "not yet" I wouldn't have been sad when I didn't get it originally and I wouldn't have been inspired to pray and ask for things to work out okay.

So in case you were interested, I am now employed at the BYU Bookstore. I work every day from 10 am to 1 pm and I am found at the desk with all the ducks on it that says "General Book Information" over it on the wall.

What do I do? I stock, organize, and dust my assigned sections of the shelves, fix incorrect price stickers, answer customer questions and help them find books, wander the sales floor to help customers out, look to see if we carry books in stock, sometimes answer phones and make announcements over the loudspeaker, run special errands for Supervisor and/or Manager, and sometimes, in my free moments, I get to sit at the desk and read because I'm done with things but I have to stay in case customers ask for help.

Basically: I work in a bookstore and I give people advice about books and I have a very good general knowledge of what we are selling and I am learning about ISBNs and important things that I will need to know about because I want to someday write and publish books.

This is actually my dream job.

And I know what's happening, and why. For the first time in a long time, I'm beginning to see light during the day. I went to the psychiatrist and got pills (antidepressants) that I take every morning which make me happy. I go to therapy every week and talk about my problems. I have two classes right now; one is about Mormon church history which is fascinating and one is about literature and film with a focus on courtly romances like Lancelot and Guinevere or Tristan and Isolde or Pride and Prejudice or Jane Eyre. Like I kid you not we are reading P&P and Jane Eyre for class. And I have this great job and I moved out of my old apartment and I don't live in a shoebox and I have my own washer and dryer and I pack my lunch for school and I'm eating healthy and I don't eat when I'm bored because I'm not hungry which is a side effect of the pills and I exercise twice a week at the gym with Superwholockmarauder and another friend and I'm remembering to pray every night and I am just really, really happy right now. My life is wonderful and perfect.

And although I find myself wishing I could have a boyfriend or a husband to be with- watching people get engaged and holding hands and things, it's really cute- it's not something that hurts me as much as it did just a few weeks ago. I'm doing better. And although I don't really know what I'm doing with my life just yet- I feel that for once, everything is coming up me.