All our flesh was like veil...

They told my parents to put me in Ballet lessons because I was a clumsy kid. Instead of making me into the graceful, pretty kid my mom wanted I made me into a kid who was obsessed with swans and could only be graceful on my toes. I would dance, alone, for hours to Swan Lake, pretending I was a princess in tutus and lace.

In my room, I was lovely. I would bow deeply, accept roses from my fans, and plié my way to greatness. In public, however, I remained stiff and shy. I would always look at my feet and rarely glace upward. I was, for lack of a more poetic way the phrase it, gawky. I had long limbs and big eyes, but I also had a belly and a brain. I worshipped the sun and, to this very day, my nose is a map of every summer I ever had: a topographic story told in freckles.

Middle school was cruel to me, with a multitude of kids punching me in my chubby chest and laughing at my dreamy ideas of skyward travel and otherworldly inventions. I had many crushes and many heartaches and I learn, from all of that, to make a joke of myself. I would exaggerate my trips and stumbles and make the boys laugh. I alienated nearly every girl I met by allowing their boyfriends to be my confidants. I walked through cheerleading formations and stumbled through my own first dances.

However, the one thing I learned, much earlier than was strictly fair, was that laughing at myself was the best thing I could ever do. I understood, even at 12, that this life a one supreme joke of struggle and that, by making myself the butt of my jokes I was beating everyone else to the punch.

Today, as an adult, I will never be the prettiest girl in room. I will never harness, as so many women have, the power of my own sexuality, but I will always have the ability to laugh at myself. And, as look so fatefully fade, I will always have that, and my magnificent imagination to carry me along.

I think, in retrospect, that this is the greatest gift I could have ever been given.

To imagine myself, all awkward and weird, as a prima ballerina or as a lovely creature to be treasured means that I will never, as so many will, be sad or lonely.