Image credit: Left: Some guy at the school ball. Right: Drew Corby

(Nor does it give you a bloody good life)

I spent a good part of my younger years trying to look like someone I wasn’t.

I thought my thighs were too big, my belly button was too inny, my ankles too straight, my boobs too small, my stomach too wibbly, my posture too hunched, my wrists too skeletal. My freckles too plenty, my feet too long, my skin too pasty, my hair too curly, my eyelashes too fair.

SURELY THOSE GOOD LOOKING PEOPLE WERE HAPPIER THAN ME.

I thought that if I looked attractive, then I would be attractive, and then I would be happy.

So I lay in the sun til I was sunburnt and ruined my sheets with fake tan. I bleached my hair blonde and got my mum to iron it onto an ironing board. I layered my pale features with heavy, black Maybelline which I almost never removed, even when sleeping next to my boyfriend.

And then I looked a bit more like what I wanted to look like.

But internally I still felt ugly.

And my bloody good life was nowhere to be seen.

I still obsessed over my looks, still checked my face in every mirror and my body in every shop window.
I was cripplingly insecure, but I pretended I had everything sorted.

I could only find validation in knowing that other people thought I looked good, because I didn’t.

At bars I was shy but I probably looked arrogant.

I wouldn’t look guys in the eye; I’d make sure they all knew I wasn’t interested even when I was. I drank and danced through night out after night out in quiet anguish, waiting for a nice guy to approach me and change my life. But no one did.

Except the occasional weird guy.

I couldn’t understand it, I looked as much like the magazine chicks as I could.

– – – – –

I’m now less conventionally attractive.

My skin is pasty, my arms are like join-the-dots, my hair curly (but still bleached!). My eyes are still Maybellined (with organic, non-Maybelline products!), but these days I can manage to leave the house without mascara, sometimes.

A taxi driver recently told me I look at least 10 years older than I am because, he explained, “so many lines” as he gestured to my forehead.

Yet it’s not as difficult for me to attract guys anymore.

So why is that, if I’m less conventionally attractive now than then?

Because physical attractiveness isn’t attractive.

Living a bloody good life is attractive.

// Happiness is attractive.

// Knowing who you are and being it without apology (flaws and all) is attractive.

// Passion is attractive.

// Motivation is attractive.

// Being full of energy is attractive.

// Being open and vulnerable is attractive.

// Being honest as all hell is attractive. I hope.

// Not needing anyone to make you happy is attractive.

// Not scoping out the room like a meerkat is attractive.

// Not wanting validation from others is attractive.

// Being carefree is attractive.

// Being kind is attractive.

// Being a good human is attractive

Being unapologetically YOU is attractive.

You living a bloody good life is ATTRACTIVE AS ALL HELL.

– – – –

If you’re all like, (like, totally,)

Ah, Andrea, you don’t know what you’re on about. I don’t need your bloody good life 101, I’m fine with the life I’ve got thank you very much. Fuck you for saying I’m not. I just need to meet the right partner and/or find the right job and then my life will be complete…

Hear me out.

It’s a chicken and egg scenario, but the answer is much more straight forward.

The bloody good life comes before the bloody good career and the bloody good relationship and the bloody good friendships.

Of course, having all those things also help to create a bloody good life, but if there’s one piece missing and you can’t work out why, nail the ‘self’ piece of the puzzle first and bloody goodness will follow in every area of your life.

How?

I’ll tell you tomorrow.

It’s what I’ll be teaching you in Bloody Good Life 101.

Which, by the way, is still coming soon. Bloody soon.

Time management is a piece I’ve yet to nail down.