Every woman has had those moments when they just feel like they look ugly and want to hide their face from the world. But one woman has this self-perception all the time and wrote about a recent painful experience she had out in public when her internal views of herself were confirmed by people’s abuse and mistreatment.

“I am an ugly woman. Objectively, I really am. Please don’t argue with me on this one, Reddit. I am not overweight, actually in better shape than most women my age, I dress well, I am great with makeup,” throwmeaway4325 wrote. “But last weekend the world just had to remind me that despite all this, people will go out of their way to kick me.”

The anonymous woman had a night from hell. She dressed in a tight, sexy dress, applied makeup, straightened her hair and walked out of the house feeling more confident than usual and her girlfriends’ reactions to her appearance corroborated the fact that she looked good. She knew that their encouragement was sincere — girls can always tell. “For once I wasn’t just masquerading as an attractive girl with fancy makeup and clothes, but that I WAS the attractive girl. I hadn’t felt so attractive in ages,” she wrote.

But her self-assurance plummeted once she got to the club and was met with one disrespectful person after another. Men leant her group of friends money for the cover and conveniently didn’t have enough to cover her; a guy danced with her but was distracted and obviously on the lookout for something better the entire time; and a photographer asked her to get out of a shot. “For all the effort I had put into looking and feeling good that night, it seemed like it just didn’t matter.”

Hours after posting the personal essay, the young woman’s story went viral with many posting positive and encouraging responses as well as similar occurrences. She might have been hurt but it seems her post has helped people as a result — a silver lining to an ugly situation.

Read this woman’s post in its entirety on Reddit here.