smoke and mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors.I look in the mirror. I see a beautiful girl. Long, dark blonde hair and sad, hazy grey eyes. Bangs that sweep across my forehead just above my eyebrows. Pale skin. Humble-sized breasts. Large hips. Very tall. Yes, beautiful. Yet plain. A plain personality. An incredibly soft voice, sometimes only a hush, a whisper, barely audible. I long for someone to see beyond the plainness. Because plainness just doesn’t seem to stand out in this world. I just don’t seem to stand out. So I seek consolation and validation in another world.I take pictures. Beautiful pictures, capturing myself at my most perfect, beautiful angle. I brush my hair and do my make-up like so. To the point where I am hardly recognizable as plain, and instead, I look beautiful. I remove my modest clothes and put on revealing clothes, ones that show the curves of my body. I look like a model from the magazines. I look like I stand out from the others. I write information about myself, encapsulating my wit, my intelligence, and a few brief facts about myself. I post everything online and I feel spectacular.I wait a little bit for someone to respond to my virtual world. I long to hear a compliment. Any compliment. After a few moments, I get one.Hey hotty, what are your plans for tonight?I grin behind the computer screen. I feel a little twinge of happiness. Someone actually likes me- someone thinks I’m beautiful.I write back:Not much, u?I eagerly anticipate a response. In the meantime, my inbox is flooded with messages.hey I kno u’ve heard this before but i think ur really pretty- we should meet for coffee sometime.. where u from exactly?Hey beautifulur cuteThen I get a few strange messages:Hey, I’m just looking for some fun, nothing serious. Are you into something really wild? Me and my girl are looking to explore our options by bringing another girl into the bedroom. You interested?Ew. Delete.This one message in particular catches me eye. I decide to add the guy to msn. All of a sudden, I’m adding guy after guy to msn. It’s like an addiction. All I’m doing is talking to these strange men- boys, really. They’re all between the ages of 18 and 25. I look at all their pictures, and a lot of them seem really cute. Maybe one of them will want to meet me- maybe one of them could be the man I’ve been waiting all 19 years of my life for.