Happily Imperfect. Stacey Solomon

my opinion, but at those moments I make a conscious effort to tell myself I’m good enough, and that it’s okay to be unsure or even to change my mind on an issue. I tell myself it’s okay to be nervous. If I felt nothing, I would wonder whether I wanted or cared about my work.

      Knowing my triggers, working with my body and mind, and letting go of the need to stop my anxiety has helped me to keep the attacks in perspective, even to celebrate them. I find that turning a big negative into a positive is the way forward, though it takes time and understanding to achieve. I see my GP regularly, and I make sure my family and I eat healthily and do loads of outdoor play. I focus on creating a happy, balanced home and work life. The Big A can be a positive, even if it often doesn’t feel that way. The challenge for me is to remember that, and keep living my life the best way I know how.

      STAY POSITIVE

      Find someone neutral or trustworthy, perhaps a GP, family friend, partner, or mental health professional, and just open up. There’s nothing to be ashamed of. Speaking up on any mental-health issue is brave and honest, and will make things easier.

      You may need further professional help, which may include medication or talking therapies. Work at understanding your triggers.

      Recognize that anxiety is part of you – and is no different from any other illness. If you break your leg, you go straight to a doctor, and it’s the same with panic attacks. Treat your condition as an illness rather than as something to be ashamed of.

      CHAPTER 3

       Ugly Duckling

      The pretty girls at school were petite with cute button noses, smooth, shiny hair, sculpted eyebrows, long lashes and fuzz-free skin.

      Then there was me. I was gawky. Ridiculously tall, with frizzy, unmanageable hair – barely there eyebrows and lashes, and a thick Yeti-like fuzz of body hair.

      How did I get through school with those ‘gifts’ from Mother Nature? I just didn’t realize how unconventional I was until people pointed it out to me. Even then, I was blissfully unaware of what people classed as pretty or otherwise. I hadn’t really thought about my looks until then. I’d concentrated on developing my personality. I could make people laugh, and if I was naughty and funny, I had friends. I thought less about what I looked like, and more about who I was.

      You could say that was where it all began for me. I had to cultivate my character because my looks didn’t mean anything to me. My Shallow Hal approach to life meant that looks were irrelevant to me. Whether someone was kind, funny or smart was way more important than how they looked. I still feel that today.

      Saying that, I knew I wasn’t cute on the first day I walked through the gates at high school with the rest of my year group, and someone, an older child, said quite loudly: ‘Ugh, she’s not little …’ And by ‘little’ they meant cute or sweet, or even ‘resembling someone my own age’.

      I didn’t resemble anyone of my age. I didn’t fit my year group. My body didn’t fit my age. I was much taller and awkward, with fully developed boobs yet I still had milk teeth. Go figure.

      I basically had an adult’s body, plus all the accompanying hormones, with a child’s face and emotional development. I was a complete mismatch. As soon as I heard that first ‘ugh’, I knew I was going to have to work harder than the other girls to be liked. As a kid, I’d always longed to be the cute one, the little one, but I never was. I was always the gangly one with shocking hair and tufty eyebrows. It didn’t take me long to realize that none of the boys my age fancied me. They all went for the smaller girls with the straight sleek hair and button noses.

      My hair was long but it was frizzy, so much so that my sister Jemma and I nicknamed our hair the ‘Jewish-fro’, or Jew-fro for short. Straighteners hadn’t been invented, and if they had, I wouldn’t have been allowed to buy them. Neither my mum nor my dad was vain and they’d have laughed at me if I’d said I needed to buy something to straighten my hair, though they relented when I was older. They thought we were beautiful as we were – which until then I’d believed. School had set me straight. I like to describe my ’fro in those days as part Joan Rivers, part Cher, part Monica-from-Friends-when-she-goes-to-Barbados. A fright, basically.

      By the time I hit year seven, I had braces to add to the mix. Another nail in the coffin of my physical appearance. My front teeth were so far apart I liked to joke they had had an argument and were trying to get away from each other. At one point, pre-brace, I could fit a pound coin in the gap. My eyebrows had become small tufts that sat waving at me from over my eyes, and I’d been blessed with thick black hair all over my body except in the places that girls want it. My body was, I thought, horrendous. I was embarrassed by it and by my face. I wanted to stop time so I could go back to being young, but my physique wasn’t letting that happen.

      When (shock! horror!) someone finally fancied me, it was a boy from year eleven (when I was still in year seven). I found that disgusting because, back then, I thought he was way too old for me. Practically ancient! Also, the girls in his year took his liking for me as treachery, and blanked me, which wasn’t pleasant, especially as I never encouraged him.

      All in all, I was pretty insecure. I knew I would never be the pretty one in class, so I felt I had to earn people’s friendship by acting out and generally being as loud, naughty and funny as I could.

      I had to make myself likeable – it was a survival mechanism, but it taught me so much. My dad had always been very sociable. If we went to Butlins on holiday, he’d always be the parent who made friends with everyone, who led games with the kids, or got up for the talent contest. I really admired how well he got on with everyone, and how much effort he put into meeting people and honing his social skills. When I was a child he would say to me, ‘Go on, go out and make friends,’ or ‘Be confident. Go and join in.’ He had the knack of bringing people together. I always wanted to be that person, and being the ugly one at school laid the foundation for it.

      So, I told jokes, messed about and did stupid things to build my friendship group because there was nothing I could do to change my appearance. I felt I had to work way harder than the attractive girls to fit in and be accepted, and that people had to have a good reason to want to be friends with me. Rightly or wrongly, that had a huge impact on the development of my character.

      I rapidly became the class clown and loved my friends, who came from across the spectrum of the year group, including the popular ones, the pretty ones and the clever ones. I was just friends with everyone. I made sure I was the one you could have a laugh with and was great fun to be around.

      Louise was my hero. She was popular, pretty and naughty, so, to me, she was endlessly mysterious and fascinating. All the boys loved her, and I looked up to her. My mate Joelly was just like me, really silly and childish in her tastes and behaviour. We both found really uncool things funny, and shared a secret liking for a babyish cartoon called The Land Before Time. Neither of us would have admitted at school to liking it – it would’ve been social suicide – but together we’d laugh over our favourite bits.

      I was so rubbish at lying that I always got caught out. When I went off to school, I’d take my skiving clothes in a plastic bag. Mum always left by 7 a.m. for work so I didn’t have to worry too much about being caught then. But I’d get home, still dressed in my joggers, hoodie and trainers, to find Mum staring at me, asking why on earth I wasn’t wearing my school uniform. D’oh.

      Basically, I was questioning the system at the same time as not feeling aesthetically ‘good enough’. I was working hard on every other part of me to compensate, and at times I definitely took it too far, but underneath it lay the strong belief, passed on to me by my amazing parents, that personality outweighs physical appearance. The thing I care most about, regardless of how I look, is