Learning to love myself has been a years-long struggle and battle; my enemy was me, my thoughts, and the lies I believed. For a majority of my life, low self-esteem was my #1 battle and it always stayed on top. I could never shake it and spent many days crying wondering why I wasn't pretty, why I wasn't skinny enough, would it always be like this, would I ever like who I was and be okay with everything; it was a very detrimental thing to face and really took a toll on my emotional and mental states. All I wanted to do was see myself as my friends and parents said they saw me, which was pretty; I wanted to look in the mirror and be happy with what I saw.

No matter what anyone told me, I continued to see myself as worthless, unlovable, and not good enough. All I wanted was to love myself, love who I was made to be, and feel comfortable in my own skin. No amount of makeup, time spent working out, or healthy food could give me this love for myself; I had to find this love.

I went to a friend who I knew had struggled with low self-esteem and body image issues and asked for help; she told me something she did was write notes of affirmation and positivity about herself in places she would see them the most and eventually and worked for her. I did that and it began the process of me finally learning to love myself and be comfortable in my skin. What is crazy is that being treated like absolute crap one final time was what really helped in this whole learning to love myself process.

I learned from bad relationships that if I didn't know how to love me, how could I expect anyone else to. I took that and ran with it. I decided to stop settling, give it all to God, and trust in Him. It was not a quick or easy process and there were bad days that made it seem impossible to ever happen, but it did happen. I am living proof that it is possible to go from absolutely despising yourself, to absolutely loving yourself. One of my biggest motivations was the phrase, "Fake it 'til ya make it"; faking it eventually became a habit and that habit eventually became real.

Learning to love myself was not an easy road, but being able to look at who I was and who I am now is one of the biggest blessings.