I have struggled with my body for a long time now. Anyone who is close to me knows how insecure I am about my weight. My friends have watched me refuse to try on clothes I love because they might make me look even bigger than I am. They've heard me make comments about how I need to lose a few pounds or how I wish I was as skinny as I used to be. When I'm around my friends my feelings toward my body are subtle, for the most part. They're something that is occasionally mentioned but never the focus of discussion for longer than five minutes. But in private my self hate is much more prominent. When I look at my body in the mirror I don't see anything to be proud of. I see things that should be changed. I see a stomach that should be much flatter. I see hips that are too square like. I see an ass that desperately needs squats. I see thighs with too many stretch marks. My boobs are too small and my waist isn't small enough. When I look at myself in the mirror I can't find a single thing about me that I think is beautiful, attractive, or even acceptable. My body is not good enough, and it never has been.

My friends and family have all told me that I wasn't fat. That I'm being too hard on myself. Even the BMI calculator that I found online five minutes ago said I was in a healthy weight. But that doesn't change the way I feel. It doesn't change the fact that I refer to myself as a fat ass on a regular basis and I look at my body in disgust at least once a week. Or that I can't say the words "I'm not fat" and feel like I'm telling the truth. Because I'm always comparing myself to what I should be. I've come to accept this idea of beauty that the media presents. I hold myself to this standard that I'll never live up to. I preach to other people that you should love the body they're given but I fail to take my own advice.

But I want to try. I want to be able to look in the mirror and call myself beautiful. I want to be comfortable in the body that God gave me. I want to be able to say the words, "I'm not fat," and believe it. So I'm going to try something. Starting today every time I look in the mirror I'll try to find something positive about my body. I want to be have confidence in my body, in who I am. For the first time in a long time, I want to be able to love me for who I am, not who I want to be.