Picture Perfect

I am a camera shy person or maybe I should say the camera makes me a shy person. I've gone a clicking, smiling the best of my smiles, trying to look the best of my appearance but when the snapshot eventually lands up in my hands I feel like ripping it apart because I never look the way I want to look in the photograph. But it isn't the fault with the camera nor the fault of the hand pressing on the button, the entire fault lies with my being. There are times, when I silently sit in front of the altar in the mornings and ask God to grant me a beautiful look that will send loving glances towards me whenever I walk past people. There are nights when I dream that I actually get up in the morning looking like a princess. But the image that greets me every morning in the bathroom is of the same dejected, rejected being splashing water as if the drops would splash away all ugliness from that face. Every mirror I pass through, even the glasses of the showcase around the dingy bars where you can see your hazy image I see myself peering into it as if hoping for a transformation to have happened in the few seconds I missed seeing myself.
People who know me might be thinking of me as some really obnoxious being so much filled with myself and nothing else but what they don't know is that when I caste those looks at myself, I am actually checking on myself and waiting for that picture perfect moment.