Not the Pretty One

I learned it young, before I learned my worth

The way they’d look at me, then look at her

They’d say her name a little louder

Like I was standing next to something better

I didn’t need it spelled out loud

I knew where all the eyes would run

I learned real quick where I stood

Beside the pretty one

It’s not one moment, it’s a thousand

Little cuts you don’t forget

You start measuring your worth

By the things they never said

I was never the pretty one

Never the one they’d say out loud

I learned to smile through the quiet

Hold my ground inside the crowd

It hurt before I understood

I wasn’t what the mirror won

But I learned to stand in truth

I was more than not the pretty one

You grow a skin, you grow a way

To laugh it off and look okay

You learn to be the easy girl

So no one sees what you don’t say

You find your value somewhere else

In standing strong within yourself

In being chosen when it matters

Not just noticed for what flatters

And yeah, some nights it still comes back

Those echoes I outgrew

But I don’t live inside the voice

That once defined my youth

I was never the pretty one

Never the one they’d say out loud

I learned to smile through the quiet

Hold my ground inside the crowd

It hurt before I understood

I wasn’t what the mirror won

But I learned to stand in truth

I was more than not the pretty one

⸻

They don’t tell you how a girl

Starts shrinking just to fit

Or how long it takes to unlearn

What the world was careless with

I found my name beyond their eyes

Found my strength in being seen

Not for how I looked to them

But who I learned to be

I was never the pretty one

But I’m still standing, still enough

I’ve been loved for who I am

Not the shape or how I look

I don’t need to win that crown

I don’t need what they’d begun

I grew into something deeper

Than just being not the pretty one,

Yeah

I was just a girl who learned early

How the world keeps score

Now I’m a woman who knows

There’s so much more