How people see you

My left ear, the right one looks much the same,
apart from being on the other side of my head...

When I was about 13 and had never even had a single thought in my head about my ears, I was told they looked like cauliflower ears by a class mate (the same one that would scream if she saw the teensiest spider crawling on her desk, like a really miniscule harmless spider). I wondered what she meant by that and when I looked in the mirror, I still didn't really understand. My ears didn't look anything like cauliflowers. 

I still don't think much about my ears and still don't think they look like cauliflowers.

Blue!

When I was about 19 I was told by a colleague that I had beautiful grey eyes. The fact he said they were beautiful was fantastic. The grey part not so much, as my eyes are very much blue. Perhaps not navy blue or periwinkle blue, but they are blue nonetheless.

A few years ago I kept hearing (nobody ever said it directly to my face) that I was fat. Well, this I knew to be a downright lie, as I was proportionally overweight. In the end though, I had to concede the fact that actually proportionally overweight is only a nice way of telling yourself that you are in fact FAT. Those whispers behind my back were true. I am now working on losing the fat by eating less and moving more.

Light blonde, but I was only 5 at the time.

Then recently a friend told me that my hair was brown and that I did not have any grey. When I told my mum about that blatant untruth, she said that in fact, my hair was brown (no mention of the grey). No no no no! I have never had brown hair, so the first time this year I could make it to the hairdresser my most important question was: what is the colour of my hair?

She put me at ease: my hair is very much not brown. It's middle to dark blonde (which I thought) and some of the grey is starting to show, but only slightly as my hair is middle to dark blonde and NOT brown!

It was dyed...

And as for my name! Anybody will recognise it. Being called something you most certainly aren't called and wondering do I look like a Tamara or Barbara or even Gabrielle? And yes, people have called me those names over the years. 

So, if you ever meet me: I am a dark blonde (with grey starting to show slightly), blue eyed, still overweight but working on it, normal eared woman called Mara.