If one stops to have a long, good think about it, the world as we know it is generally inhabited by two categories of people: the haves and the have-nots.

With the rich comes the poor, with the intelligent comes the asinine and with the beautiful comes the ugly.

I do not know about you, of course, but let me give you an inkling to which sub-category I fall under; one glance – and that alone is more than sufficient, I assure you – at me and you will, more likely than not, find yourself incredibly thankful for possessing your current appearance, no matter how much you may bemoan it. In short, allow me to describe myself with the euphemism ‘plain’.

Suffice to say, then, that you will have guessed correctly by now what category to place me in. Yes, a cover girl, I am not.

There was an extensive period in my life that I found my face as a cursed burden to bear. Occasionally, on those days when everything seems to go wrong, I still do feel that way. Now, I can safely claim myself as fairly tolerant with how I am as an individual, mentally and physically, because of a few words someone once said to me.

Up to now, however, the one thing I cannot endure is the word ‘ugly’.

“Ugly!”

I stumbled away unseeingly, for tears had already pooled in my eyes and were leaking from them. Mocking laughter rang in my ears and I began to run in an effort to get away from them, from everyone, from reality. The road where I was at was silent and seemed menacing to my young eyes. As it is, the sky was rapidly turning an inky black colour as the sun sank to the ground, taking along with it the reddish-orange hues of its rays. Biting my lower lip, I burst into fresh tears.

It was a dark moment, both figuratively and literally, for me.

As a child, I never knew anything that occurred outside my small world of home and kindergarten. It was an idyllic life; my parents adored me, my every whim and fancy was usually catered to and kindergarten was something I anticipated daily with eagerness. For those early years, I never thought about how I looked. Ah, to be a child again!

School was, naturally, an entirely different ball-game and came as quite a shock to me. True, I was accepted socially. Yet there was the odd remark; about my nose, which was proclaimed as crooked and the upper lip that was bent at an angle. At the beginning, I did not bother about it, but as time passed and we progressed in age, I would wonder whether I really did appear starkly divergent from my peers. I took to studying class photographs intently, noting that I did seem to be a cygnet among ducklings. Only, however, I did not blossom into a swan like the fairytale. When I hit the pre-pubescent age of twelve, I developed unpleasant skin problems, gained an unflattering amount of weight and wore spectacles thicker than most of my classmates.

It started off with a passing comment, one I brushed off uneasily as a joke because it was expected of me. Events escalated from there, and I had zero contingency of halting it right there and then. Cowardly as it may sound, I was weak; I was always getting tongue-tied whenever they made a barbed observation. School became a form of torture to suffer through daily. My parents grew concerned with my withdrawn attitude but when they inquired if there was anything wrong, I inevitably answered ‘no’.

The episode at the playground that led to me fleeing with my tail between my legs was one of the worst, one of the many that still stings even today. The other one re-opens a wound, for it was so pernicious, I never forgot it.

They hovered around me hungrily, like predators staking out their prey. The two of them were the perpetrators and I hated them with every inch of my childish heart.

Their whispers floated clearly to my ears, but I was feigned indifference to it all. Then:

“…she’s just handicapped, that’s all!”

I turned immediately, face flushed with anger and humiliation. “What did you say?” I hissed.

The two regarded me coolly in an unperturbed fashion. “Well, you are handicapped. Nobody has a face like yours,” answered one of them, sniggering. Her friend joined in the laughter.

Shameful as it was, I turned around and sped to the bathroom to cry my eyes out.

“Dad.”

My father paused in his perusal of the newspaper and looked questioningly at me. “Yes?” he replied.

I knelt by the sofa in which he sat, hugged my knees and thought for a while. Finally, I asked, softly, “Why do I have a crooked nose?”

His face darkened with worry at the sudden, and rather awkward, question, but he said slowly, “Well, sometimes people are born like that. It doesn’t mean anything, though, and you can fix it when you’re older.”

I nodded, absorbing this information, and, because I could not contain myself any longer, I burst out, “Am I handicapped?”

Silence for a moment, and then he snapped, “Who said you were?”

Hurriedly, I said, “Nobody.”

“I hope so. You may have a crooked nose but it doesn’t mean you’re handicapped!”

I got up to leave the room. “Okay. Thanks.”

He inclined his head, but I saw the tense look on his face as I left.

It niggled at my mind for the longest while. For hours I would waste time by ruminating over my physical attributes. My already shaky self-confidence was on the verge of collapse. It struck me that at the rate I was going, the only way I could go was down and not up.

Or so I thought, and continued thinking, until the day I was forced to walk back home as my parents had an emergency meeting they could not afford to miss, and had instructed me to walk back home after school. Trudging along, kicking a pebble or two in a dejected manner, I bumped into someone due to my inattention.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I apologised instantly.

She was maybe in her seventies, with kindly eyes and a serene smile.

Waving a hand, she smiled down at me and said, “I know you. You’re the girl who lives three doors away from me. I see you sometimes around the neighbourhood. I’m Alice.”

Although it was extremely impolite, I gaped at her openly. Now that I had gotten my bearings right, I could vaguely place her. My parents had spoken of her before; apparently many of the residents around our neighbourhood had protested about her house. Run-down and in desperate need of a painting job, the house had been abandoned for decades until she had moved in. Expectations of a renovation had not been met. In the affluent community, this was something quite intolerable. Nevertheless, the housing committee had pointed out that she had bought the property, which meant that it was not under their jurisdiction. The complaints were dropped but many were prejudiced against her from the start.

If she was aware of my staring, she did not acknowledge it. Instead, she chatted amiably as we walked to the neighbourhood, and I warmed to her. Upon reaching my house, I waved and was about to unlock the door until it hit me.

I had no key!

Burying my face in my hands, I groaned. It was such a cliché to be locked out. In any event, I had to resign myself to waiting on the doorsteps. As I squatted, a voice said, “Locked out? Come over and wait at my house first.”

Taken unawares, I jerked and glanced up to see Alice cheerfully pointing to her house. I hesitated; but then I recalled my parents talking about what a lovely person she was. Furthermore, my parents would be terribly upset about me waiting on the doorstep, as they tended to worry about my safety. With that, I acquiesced thankfully.

Her garden was wild and overgrown with plants, which gave one the idea of being in a small jungle. The house was grim for paint peeled off the walls and the structure seemed ancient. She unlocked her door and gestured for me to go in.

I stepped in warily, and she flicked on the lights. She motioned towards a couch and told me to have a seat while she got some refreshments. I did as bidden and took in my surroundings.

The room was comparatively bare, with only furniture and a fan present. Sumptuous it could not be called, but there was a charming quality about it that was appealing. On the wooden floors, the red couch with gold linings stood out richly, whereas the yellowish-orange curtains billowed in the breeze. A television and a bookcase stood discreetly in the corner, both a bronze colour. There was no artwork, no flowers and no coverings.

I liked it.

Alice entered with a tray of drinks and settled herself in a chair. “Have a drink,” she said, and I picked a glass up, thanking her.

“Don’t mention it,” she laughed, “Oh, and I called your parents. They asked me to keep you here till they can get away from the office.”

I murmured my gratitude. Conversation lapsed.

“How do you find the house?”

I blushed. “Errr…” I stuttered.

Seeing my discomfort, she chuckled. “I know. It looks a tip from outside.”

“The room’s lovely though.”

She seemed pleased. “Thank you.”

Curiosity got the better of my manners. “If you don’t mind my asking, why don’t you decorate your house?”

Taking a sip of her drink, she considered the question. “It’s quite simple. Let me ask you this. Would you want a majestic house filled with all sorts of trinkets compared to, say, a small house that’s not much outside and inside but feels like a home?”

I shook my head after giving that some thought.

“People can only see the outside most of the time. Me, I don’t judge things by how they look. It’s important to realise the inside is what matters; the feeling of it, the impression you get from it. I love it that my house lacks every possible thing outside, but is such a haven inside.” She broke off. “Sorry, I’m going on rather.”

Shaking my head, I replied, “No, it’s fine. You’re right.”

I thought of the time I had once stepped into a friend’s house, which was exquisitely done to every single detail. Inside, it had been cold and lifeless, even with priceless artworks and ornaments artfully arranged everywhere. In Alice’s house, I felt like I could be myself. The same, I thought, went for my own house.

An analogy of people, do you not think so? A person can be ethereally beautiful, but strip the outer facade and should you find the ugliness beneath, one would be utterly repulsed. The outside means little as you will eventually know the inside, and if that is hideous, people will still leave you in the cold anyway.

It has been five years now, and I can stand up and say confidently who I am without wondering if people find my face weird or not. I know people who befriend me or love me just the way I am truly know that the inside matters, and the outside does not.

Alice has left me. She wrote me a letter before she fell into a sleep from which she never woke up, full of gentle advice. The letter ends with a reminder of our first real conversation where she said that the outside pales beside the inside. “Why decorate?” she finishes humorously.

Why decorate, indeed?