A Chance Meeting
“You’re ugly” is what Janneke’s mother said when she was a small child, an image that carries over into her adult years—always seeing herself through the looking glass that her mother created. Never free from the haunting words echoing in Janneke’s ears. Beauty was for other women, never met for Janneks, and so she believed to be accurate. That was until a co-worker Shannon, who, unlike Janneke, viewed herself as one of the prettiest women in the office.
Shannon had everything going for her; she was pretty and self-confident, while Janneke carried the weight that her mother placed on her, feeling anything but confident all she knew that she was ugly with no hope of having a “boy” look at her or want her. That was what her mother used to say, a lie that Janneke believe even today.
However, a chance meeting, a blind date that Shannon had orchestrated for Janneke, who could never imagine why she would do such a thing, especially since Shannon knew a little about Janneke thought about herself that she was ugly. Still, with some pressure, Janneke agreed to go on this blind date with Derrick.
Derrick, whose whole life was a view of “perfection.” Everything was a measure to meet his requirements when dating a woman; she had to have blonde hair and blue eyes. That was what his father had taught him at an early age to always strive for the best, no second or third. A lesson he lived by in all of his life, every woman had to meet his expectation, no question. That was until he meets Janneke; she wasn’t anything he had ever expected; she was different. One unique, a beauty beyond what he had first expected to see, a diamond in the rough.
And in there, something happens to Derrick; he found himself falling in love with Janneke, a plan that would disrupt his “perfection.” While Janneke causes herself to see with a new sight, no longer through the looking glass that her mother had created for her, for the first time, Janneke started to see herself not as “ugly” but beautiful that opens up a new world for her. One of wonder and hope and maybe ‘love.’
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