I can't see the beauty

I stare into the mirror, just staring. My blue eyes stared back at me. Red hair falling down to my shoulders. Pale skin dotted with freckles. I tried, I really did. I tried to see what my mother claimed she saw. I tried to see that beauty in that face; in my face. But I couldn't. I couldn't see the beauty.

I tried to find it. I traced my face with my eyes, trying to see this "beauty" that I didn't know. Where was it? All I saw was the face I saw, day after day, wishing that, just for once, it was different, more "perfect", and, maybe, more like someone else's. But it wasn't. It was still mine; still plain. And I had yet to see the beauty.

I sighed and turned away.

I can't see the beauty.

It was a depressing thought, and I pushed it away, wanting to go on with my day and forget what I looked like, forget that I was still the same face that some people declared had beauty. I didn't see it. I didn't think I ever would. I just wanted to forget what it looked like.

 I came back to that mirror, who knows how much longer afterwards, and more for the wiser. I was older, had lived longer, had felt the love of others and the caring spirits. And I stared at that face. And instead of seeing what I knew as my familiar face, I unfocused myself from what other people said, what I thought and, instead, thought of God. And in that moment, staring at myself in the mirror, I suddenly saw myself as I would see a stranger: somebody I had never seen before, just having caught a glimpse of them.

And suddenly I could see the beauty.

I saw the smile lines, I saw the sparkling eyes with laughter, I saw the care, I saw the love that had been shed upon me.

It didn't matter if I would ever be considered the most beautiful person ever, or if I was considered the most ugly person ever. It didn't matter. There was a "beauty" that was unfading, something that would never go away, even when tresses change to white and skin wrinkles. Something that I had never thought of before, but suddenly had become a reality.

I could see the beauty.

*fictional