They Called Me the “Ugly High School Graduate” in Front of Everyone — and My Family Expected Me to Smile and Accept It

braces. I had thick glasses. I had the kind of severe, cystic acne that covers your face like a topographical map of everything you hate about yourself, visible from across a room, impossible to conceal, treated by my mother not as a medical condition but as a personal failing—as though clear skin were a moral achievement and my failure to produce continue reading …