My unloyal brown hair plagued me with a sense of inferiority when I stood in a line of blondes who had lovely cerulean eyes to accompany their uniform features. Darting from side to side, constantly checking my jittery hands, my mahogany eyes were jaded with the deep, rich shades of brown as they surveyed myself and who I stood with.

With two picturesque people building a bulwark of bodies on both sides of me, visceral sentiments of entrapment sieged my hands, and a far too familiar feeling crept into my mind.

Those who surrounded me were my family, people bonded by blood and shared heritage. People who acted as the utter epitome of acceptance and comfortability. People who remained in life through the ups and downs. People who—at the very basis of it all—are similar.

Yet, the feeling that was creeping into my mind, sinking into my skin, diverted from comforting similarity. It rivaled the exact opposite of what was expected: unbearable.

Standing there, my rebellious brown hair acting as an alarm of unconformity, I appeared to stick out; I felt less than the others for not carrying on the blonde locks and ocean eyes. Something so minuscule as a deviant complexion demanded my full attention.

At that moment, despite the loving people who surrounded me, despite the golden joy that encapsulated my family, I felt radically different and like I didn’t belong. I felt as if I were the one who didn’t deserve to be there, as if I was a forced second choice.

That wasn’t the first time that I had noticed this heinous emotion. It wasn’t the last, either. Sticking to me, that feeling has asininely followed me through the maze of life, infiltrating my thoughts.

Something so simple as this feeling has bedeviled me through my life; instances of small differences where I stand out, where I feel less significant, where I feel unwanted, rack up in my mind.

And they sit there. They have been there a while now if I’m being honest.

For days on end, this haunting of being a second, unwelcome choice—if that—will enrapture my mind, providing the only “logical” explanation at the moment. Whether it be that I stand out or that I’m forgotten, these feelings dictate that I attach my worth to how others judge me, whether my mind intelligently interprets it correctly or not.

I have racked up all these slashed, red-hot price tags with embarrassingly low numbers from every interaction. My mind refuses to let them go, to re-evaluate, to listen to the version of myself begging to be heard.

Because I know that these tags carry an erroneous entitlement to my feelings. I know that they cannot be true, whether I fit in or I don’t. I know that they will fill my ears with lies.

I know that I need to find my own worth.