It’s been a long and exhausting journey trudging to get to where I am mentally at the moment. I am still moving along because even I will admit, I’m not completely there yet. I don’t know if I ever will actually be there, to truly reach full happiness with myself, but I can only work towards it every day, and you should do the same. Many people assume that self-acceptance is straightforward. You either like yourself or you don’t like yourself. They see it in black-and-white terms when in reality, nothing in life is black and white. Everything we experience and feel is gray and on a continuum. That’s what makes it so hard to express to others the exact combination of self-love and self-doubt you feel at a certain time. Self-image is not simplistic to express, and it is not established into a set and permanent place once you feel great one day. In reality, one day may be beautiful but another day you may feel atrocious. In other words, some days are great and some days are awful.

For the longest time, maybe about six or so years, I wasted a huge portion of my life. I made myself miserable by trying to achieve something that I knew wasn’t possible. I craved perfection, knowing it was an impossible concept that wasn’t realistic. Believe me, I was extremely aware of Photoshop, and the unhealthy status of most of the models depicted in media. For some strange reason, I still tried. I wasn’t ignorant to all of the information of the industries creating false "improved" images of models. However, I was ignorant to the idea of beauty in the person I already was; for the body and mind I was given at birth. I pushed and pushed. I went to extremes to feel happy and proud of myself. Yet, I still became angry every time I looked at myself because no matter what, I knew I wasn’t going to be happy; never content. I knew it; I knew it very well, but I convinced myself that maybe there was a small chance. That just maybe, I could be the one to obtain the perfect image, to obtain what I craved more than anything else. Those are the worst memories I hold in my mind, and they took up so much of my time. It was consuming, all of it. It took so much out of me to constantly tear myself down everyday. However, I started to realize that things are never perfect, and people are far from perfect. What exactly is perfection anyway? How do we reap it?

Perfection is an ideology that is defined by each individual differently, coordinating with what they see as optimal and desirable. Perfection is not real. However, beauty is, and it is seen in more than just physical attributes. It is, as cliche as it may be, “in the eye of the beholder.” With that being said, that is where my journey to self acceptance began. I realized that beauty comes in many forms and appearances. It comes in the way you speak of your passions with your booming and bold voice and in your excited body language. It comes in the way that you express love and affection to the people you hold closest. It comes in the rawest forms of thoughts and in the emotions that are so strong your voice shakes when you articulate them. It comes in the gleaming smile when you are greeted by a child. Your beauty is seen in your moments of uncontrollable laughter, when you have that glimmer of bliss in your eyes. Your beauty is in your scars and the life experiences they are derived from. Your beauty is in all that you’ve survived. Your beauty is the little wrinkles in the corners of your eyes that are left there from all the smiling you’ve done. Beauty is traceable in every aspect of your being. You are you for a reason. What’s “perfect” to me, may not be perfect to you, and that is just fine. I’m OK with that and you should be too. We are all different in our small quirks, ticks, “flaws” and whatever defines who we are. They are the incredible things. I began to look at the amount of diversity in the world and saw the beauty in everyday people with their “flaws”.

We exist in a world where everyone is dying to look like the same person. That’s fine if that’s what you are into and chose to do. You should do what you feel is best for you and makes you feel good about yourself because that’s rad. However, in the midst of all of society trying to look like a certain image, we have forgotten to embrace diversity and originality. We have forgotten that “perfection” is not real and that it is only a socially constructed concept. We have forgotten the beauty in differences and the “perfection” in individuality. By allowing this to happen, we have lost the idea that we are beautiful in our own ways, that we are important and we are loved. Most importantly, we need to open our eyes to the concept that we are all someone's idea of “perfect.” We are our own unique version of “perfection” and I’m completely satisfied with that. You should be too. It’s OK to not like yourself sometimes, but you should. You’ll get there, and you’ll see your beauty one day. As someone once said to me, “A butterfly can’t see it’s own wings, but that does not mean it is not beautiful.” Just because you can’t see your beauty, doesn’t mean it is not there, because it is.