I suspect that there is another voice inside you that you hear sometimes but ignore. My self esteem might be worse that yours, at least I bet it's gone on for a lot longer. I feel so ugly that not only do I hate to get my picture taken, it is actually painful for me to know that I am being seen at all.

I grew up big-nosed, skinny, knock-kneed, buck-toothed, too tall,feet too big,acne-scarred, yellow-toothed, flat-chested, orthopedic-shoed, hillbilly-haired and unloved. But every once in a while I hear what sounds like a sincere compliment from someone unknown to me. Does it give me much hope? No, but it does allow me to get out of the house sometimes. I suspect that my imagination makes it so much worse that it really is. But everytime I see a picture of myself I still cry at my image. But you see, it doesn't seem to bother anybody else. And I see people every day uglier that I am and wonder how they can make it through their day at all.

I hate people with healthy egos because I wish I was one of them. I wish I could for once accept a sincere compliment, but I think they are just trying to be nice to an ugly girl. Are we wrong? How would we know? We must suffer from reverse-vanily. I suspect it doesn't matter at all what we look like.