Beautiful Penmanship

"You're handwriting is beautiful."

I receive a compliments like these.....and strangely, I don't believe them.  In fact, I don't see my penmanship to be beautiful.

"But why, Nurj?" 

Why?

Because I never received the same compliment as a child.

It's a pattern. A ridiculously dangerous pattern it my life. "Whatever happened to me as a kid is the only true thing, and the things that happen when I became an adult aren't true."

To cite an example... physical attractiveness.

I never saw myself as a beautiful person, even as a young child. I saw myself as, "the bestfriend of the most beautiful person in the classroom." I did receive compliments that I was pretty, but the thing is... I never represented beauty pagents, never got approached to become a model, etc.... So in my young mind, I deemed myself to be, "A plain girl who's just in the background."

Now that I'm an adult, the story has changed. I receive a lot of compliments how beautiful, cute or pretty I am  or how they envy my fair skin.

But still... no matter how many compliments I receive... no matter how many men try to hit on me...

I still find it hard to believe.

When you have a negative scripting in your childhood, it can be difficult to change.

But still, things aren't set in stone. I'm optimistic.

So going back to the original topic....I didn't see or believe myself to have a beautiful penmanship as a child. I always saw "them" who had it. For example, I had a classmate named Che-Che in elementary and highschool. Che and I aren't that close. Even though we've been classmates since Pre-school.

Che-Che has a really beautiful penmanship. It looks extremely elegant (okay, maybe "extreme" is highly subjective). I've always heard people telling her she has beautiful penmanship.

Me? Nada.

I tried to improve my own penmanship. My penmanship varies, depending on the pen and paper I'm using.Writing morning pages, however, made me believe my handwriting became ugly. I had to write incredibly fast to jot down my thoughts.

Imaging to my immense surprise when people see my handwriting for the first time and say comments like these: "It's so beautiful!" "It looks like a font."

I'm always surprised.

... and as usual,  I shoot down the comment. "Depends on the Pen". or "No, it's not."

But it really had me thinking....

"Why do I have such a low opinion my abilities?"