Some very ugly feet

I have some very ugly feet. Always have. Always will. If there were a contest for ugly feet, I would surely come in, at least, 2nd place (I like to think that there are uglier feet out there).

As a child, I have a very vivid memory of my toenails falling off on my pinkie toes (my memory is that they fell off on the same day, but that seems awfully impossible). Instead of a normal toenail growing back, I now have a little piece of nail (it's so small that I hardly ever have to cut it and, when I put on toenail polish, I have to paint the skin so that it looks like I have more of a toenail than I really do).

My feet are extremely wide, which makes buying shoes very difficult.

My second toe is bigger than any of the others (got that from my mom) and I have lots of veins that stick out (like I'm 96 years-old).

The worst part of all ... my pinkie toe is dead. Yep, non-functioning. Doesn't move. If I need it to move, I have to manually move it. It's stuck to the toe next to it and seems to like being there.

Just take a quick look (to save you from complete horror, I will only post a picture of one foot). Warning: If you scare easily, you may want to skip this part.

As a teenager and young adult, I hated wearing flip flops or any other type of shoe that allowed others to see what hideous creatures I was walking around on. Finally, around the age of 25, I decided to open my feet up to the world (this revelation came after looking at other people's feet. Wow, there are a lot of ugly feet out there - mostly on older men, but I regress). I embraced the ugly little suckers and decided to wear any kind of shoe I could fit them into (although I still prefer sandals that hide the pinkie toe - no need to traumatize little children).

Even when I met Adam, I asked him what he thought of my feet and he said, "You have ugly feet" (this was in the first weekend we met, so really he should have lied and said he loved them, but they were so ugly he couldn't even do that and because I had lived with the feet, I couldn't blame him for his honesty, which led me to learn the lesson - Don't ask someone a question unless you really want to know the answer).

Now, as I am running, my feet are getting even uglier. I have bumps and blisters. I have calluses and deep grooves. I am almost 100% certain that the feet are getting even wider. My long toe (the second one) has a purplish toenail and is very thick. Oh, yes, very disgusting.

Regardless, I really love it. It's proof of what I'm doing. I've put in quite a few miles and the feet show that. Because of what they have allowed me to do, I wouldn't trade these feet in for anything.