Where is my beauty?

I never really know what to say when people tell me that i am beautiful. Should i say thank you? Might that not seem vain? Should i smile and look at the floor...perhaps that is arrogant...should i pretend i didn't hear them and walk away swiftly?

The reason i do not know is because i am never really sure what they mean. I am usually able to say "You have beautiful eyes, a crazy nose and a lovely wide mouth." I like the different features on the face and the body. I am never quite sure if to summarise it under beautiful does justice to it all. I think that to give one word to the thing takes away a piece of its beauty.

Musoni used to call me beautiful. He would say it over and over again. He would sing it from the minute he saw me walk into the room and then he would follow me about, sometimes singing and and other times making casual remarks about how my beauty made him feel handsome. He was silly like that, that he could just sing things and say things and make me feel like i was a flower.

One day, they announced my promotion. They said i was doing quite well and they saw no better person to take up the now vacant role of the man who had been our supervisor.

Musoni did not think i was beautiful anymore. All of a sudden, i was this emotional woman who he loathed to meet so much so that he would pull out his phone in the corridor and hold it to his ear and pretend he was speaking to someone until i was gone.

I stopped being beautiful when i ceased to be the girl in the cubicle next door. I became the woman who would determine the final mark on the appraisal. I became the woman who would point out and bring an end to the late coming, the vulgar language and the lewd behavior. I became the woman who spoilt the fun. I lost my 'beauty'.

When someone says i am beautiful, i want to ask them, do you think that if you got to know me, worked with me for a while, realised that i had a brain and i demanded results, do you think that you would still find me beautiful? But i do not ask. I close my eyes and panic a little on the inside, wondering what it is that i should say that will be correct, acceptable actually.