pictures and sadness

[Guest guest]

Hello everyone,

Sorry for being a downer but I need to reach out right now.

I was looking at photos from a Christmas party I was at. I see one

of myself and my bleph is very pronounced (I can see only half of one

of my retinas because of the angle the person taking the photo was at

from me. I ask my boyfriend " Am I really that ugly " but of course he

doesn't really respond because he doesn't really understand.

So now I am sitting here viewing some web links I hadn't seen yet off

of the BPES Family network site. Some stuff about the FOXL2 gene and

a bunch of medical words I do not understand (Google was very

helpful, but most of this is still confusing.)

It is very good to know that there are other people out there who

must have had similar experiences as me, but I am very sad and

worried and I don't know what to do.

I think of when I was a child and how out of place I always felt.

The staring from strangers, the questions from people I had just met.

I think of now when I am an adult and society's image of " beauty " is

so bafflingly impossible for me to reach that I feel inadequate as a

female and ugly and that I will never " fit " or be generally

considered pretty.

My entire life I have wanted what everyone else had: a sense of

normalcy about my appearance. Not the normal self-esteem issues kids

have, but beyond that -- a feeling of deformity and ugliness and

helplesness. And I do not think these feelings are fair or that the

people who have created scenarios where I end up feeling this way are

right.

I think of how I want to have a child one day when I am older, and I

wanted to do this before I was 30. But I am afraid to now because

either I won't be able to (I don't know what type of bleph I have) or

I will and I will have a coin-toss 50/50 chance of passing it on to

them. I think of how I would not want anyone to have to feel the way

I do right now, let alone my own child, and I despair.

I want to be able to have a normal life and have children maybe one

day and I want to look at photos of myself and not think only of how

bad my eyes look. Maybe these feelings are selfish, but they are in

my head.

I view all of the photos on this group and see how happy all of the

families and parents and grandparents and young children are and it

helps somewhat to know that, but I still have so much fear of the

future right now. I see sadness behind some of the other adult faces.

I currently cannot really afford genetic testing or any further adult

surgery (or the time to recoup afterward), even though I might want

it badly.

I don't know why I'm writing this -- maybe to just get it out, maybe

to ask for help.

But thanks to this group for being here -- until about a year ago I

thought I was totally alone in the world, and that is a horrible

feeling indeed.