Notelet III: Under My Skin

Lydia looked at herself in the mirror of the ornate bathroom. She'd just won the Industry Leader Award. All the week-ends behind closed doors over those journals had paid off. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been on a date. She was sure her eHarmony and Match.com accounts had long been deactivated. Her family hardly saw her. Who could blame her. She had been working her way up. Education was her life ticket.
Now at 31 she was at the top of her career. Now what? Who is this woman that looked right back at her? She'd made a lot of sacrifices but this sacrifice had been the most painful of all. She'd come to the point of bleaching her skin to the extent that she didn't even recognise herself. Why was she feeling guilty? Everyone who was anyone was doing it. What had been wrong with her Caucasian rich skin? Nothing only that she knew she would not get far in the male dominated world of engineering like she was before. She had reinvented herself literally. "Who cares", she murmured to herself. " I am living in my dream condo with my flashy car and my $500 per hour charge". As she looked at herself in the mirror thinking it over, a thought struck her, why was she conforming to the standards of what others thought was acceptable to get ahead? Right there and then tears stared to stream down her near perfect make-up.
​The memory of her father made her cry the more. Silently, she said, "father, I have disappointed you and let go of your sayings. Father, never again will I fell less than and change who I am. If I want to whiten my skin, it will only be to enhance the beauty I already possess. It will not be because I want to fit in or feel the need to in order to get ahead in life. If I choose not to, that is also okay because it is by my hard work that I will stand before men that matter".
​Just at that moment she heard her name being called for a second award.

You Are Quintessentially Special,
​Love Abba