For the first time in my life I am going to be perfectly honest with myself, and what better way to share this news than with the careful eyes of a public audience. I am going to be completely and truly authentic, open, and downright blunt with you here because I have to. I can easily paint a beautiful portrait of myself in writing, bragging about accomplishments and protruding with golden wisdom. But this time, it is time to be as raw of a person as I possibly can be. So, here goes nothing.

I am unhappy with my appearance. I look at myself every morning from a side angle, slap my tummy fat, let the skin jiggle a bit, and heave a heavy sigh.

I am lazy. I cannot bring myself to take a jog on the boardwalk, or ride a bike every now and then, or even visit my local gym for just an hour.

I have dry skin. My face is simply a pallet of flakes that cannot be tamed by even the strongest of moisturizers.

I cannot stand to wear makeup. It might be because I am terrible at applying it. I walk out the door looking like the hamburgler from a smokey-eye failure.

I have a terribly dry scalp. Black is my worst enemy. Yet, I will still wear my favorite little black dress with my pride stuck in my throat.

Speaking of pride, I am a little too proud. I think I am better than many people. I would never say that aloud, but, well, I guess I am doing it now.

I am, what you might call, an “attention whore”. It is because I am lonely. I want to be surrounded by people who love me. It is a comfort. The louder I am, the more attention I receive. Good or bad, attention is still attention.

I am passive aggressive to the max. If you hurt me or hurt anyone I love or care about, you become a target of full-on subtext. Subtweets, substatuses, subquotes. You get the whole sub-bang.

I have hobbit feet. Yeah, I am a twenty-something-year-old woman and I have hairy toes. How do you even shave your toes?

I am emotional. I cry... a lot. I yell... a lot. I cackle... a lot. You get the gist.

I am a drama queen. Unintentionally, really. But it is worth mentioning. It probably nips at the heels of my passive aggressiveness, so I am really asking for it.

I am jealous. I despise favoritism. If you are my friend I want you to treat me the same as you would your other friends. I can tell when you like someone more than me. I get a little green-eyed. It sticks with me for some time.

I am prone to dropping people at the blink of an eye. And then bringing them back into my life. And then dropping them again. I want you to like me. But you are mean to me, so I leave you behind. But then I don’t want you to hate me. So I say I am sorry and bring you back.

I am quite the imperfect person. But that’s the key word – person. I might hold all of these flaws within my very being but I am still capable of beauty. Rawness, realness, acceptance of flaws is still beautiful. If you are too afraid of revealing all of your inner faults and imperfections to the world (trust me, this is pretty scary right now) at least you know that we are alike. One of my flaws was pride – I recognize it, I acknowledge it, I will work on fixing it. But I am still kind, and accepting, and loving – and loved. And you are, too! So love yourself, every bit of you.