Every person is his or her own beauty beholder. If that is true then of course the age-old adage is true: "we are our own worst critics."

I know for sure that I am my worst critic. Although I'm a little pissed off that those diagnosed with narcissism get off easy. But even behind the reflection in the lake are troubled waters—there is a symptom called low self-esteem. There is always the real you looking back, the ugly you.

So who are the lucky ones? I'd have to say the ones that are true to themselves, the ones who do not bite at Eve's apple. TV presents this age-old dilemma of whether we should believe the snake, the media, the image of temptation that makes us—all of us— want to have the perfect body.

And what is the perfect body? We have all asked ourselves these questions and in the end it amounts to whether or not we should hold ourselves accountable, or if we should just blame the damn snake.

Here's my snake and you can tell me who to blame...

Three months ago, within the span of three hours, I was entirely paralyzed. It was like the snake crawled up my left leg and across my body. The bitch even reached up to my face and took half of that away from me. I was drooling out of the left side of my mouth, that did not move, and slurring out of the right side, the half of my tongue that still had feeling.

People say, "Face your demons." The nurses standing above my bed would say, "You look pretty for being in the hospital." My friends would say, "What'd you do to yourself?" And my physical therapists who were trying to get me to move just one finger would say, "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Three months later and I walk with a limp, a cane and someone permanently attached to my left arm. I don't go to parties and dance because I can't dance, at least not longer than two minutes, and I can't move any part below my waist very fluidly. Before this incident I judged my beauty on what others would say. I would judge it on what the boy trying to get in my bed would say.

Now I get these looks—looks of pity. Sure I get attention, but when I stand up the flicker in their eyes goes from "she's cute" to "shit, she's crippled." And who wants to lay a crippled person?

I've stopped looking at myself in the mirror because there is no point, because I don't accept this new person that has become me. I find myself telling the story, even fabrications of the story, and then quickly saying, "But I won't be like this forever, I'll walk again."

I don't want them to think of me, as this, because this is not beautiful to them. And I am forced to rely, for the first time in my life, on a real reflection because we are NOT our bodies, we are our scars.

I will always from this time forth see on my stomach the 18 shots I got on my stomach, the five in my back, the five on each arm, the three hours I spent in the MRI, the vomit that hit the pan for four days in a row, and the electric shocks administered to see if my nerves still worked.

These are my marks of beauty, and though most of them will be invisible to everyone else, I feel them.

So what is beauty to you? It is the picture perfect model who struts down the runway. It is not a woman like me, nor will it ever be. But in another two months when I walk perfectly again, will you approach me, the guy that blew me off when I had a cane? Won't I look like everybody else to you, now? And won't I be beautiful in your eyes again? Now isn't that a scary thought? The scary thought is that this society really is that narcissistic.