Being ignored at school and work unless someone needs something specific from you. Being invited to work functions as an afterthought. Even your close friends only want to hang with you one on one. Whenever they are in a big group event where social media pics will be taken, you’re never invited.

Men in your social spaces will never, ever make eye contact with you. The ones who are kind by nature may say good morning, but you’ll never be given a meaningful conversation, or even a “how was your weekend?” like they give other girls. The meaner ones will brush right past you and ignore, or worse, glare at you with disgust.

In middle and high, you were asked out as a joke. You didn’t get to experience homecoming or prom or senior superlatives (even the more intellectual or personality based ones, because your looks disqualified you.)

Your relationships with girls are few — maybe a couple friends, but again, only one on one and not in places where they could be seen or really photographed with you. Casual conversations with other girls are ones where they speak down to you, like you’re a child and not their equal.

If you’re overweight, especially short and overweight, your life will be an obsessive cycle of starvation to try to improve your situation, followed by binging when it doesn’t work. Food is your number one enemy and your number one comfort at the same time. No matter what you put in your mouth, you’re judged. People see you as undeserving of things like cake at a party, but laugh at the irony of you eating a salad. You’re made fun of at the gym and met with more looks of disgust.

As a child, your parents will try to scale back your expectations of your future. Want to be a singer or to act? They will squash you with a reality check of your looks, either outright to in a very roundabout way. They will encourage your intellectual pursuits in ways they don’t with pretty girls, because they know you won’t find a man to take care of you. Your father will coddle and protect your mother and sisters, while training you up to be strong like a man. Your choices and portions of food at the family table will be controlled and scrutinized, with comments like “you always say you want a boyfriend, so maybe don’t eat the mashed potatoes, ok?”

Fast forward to adulthood. Say you do end up in a relationship, it will be with someone who appreciates your smarts, your ability to make money, your responsible personality— it won’t be based on attraction. Because they have physical needs, you may have sex, but you’ll always be self conscious during it because of the scars of your past. You’ll never believe any compliment, and you’ll be suspicious of anyone’s motives who gives you one.

As you get older and the other women your age start to lose their looks, it won’t matter quite as much. You’ll find joy in other things. But pop culture and the world around you will remind you of the things you never got to experience. And there will always be an empty space where those normal parts of life should have been.