From a very young age, I learned that I was not a beautiful girl. In sixth grade, I was told (by a person who shall remain nameless) that I needed to lose weight and eat less. I was on the verge of puberty and really quite unfamiliar with my changing body. When I heard those words, it was like a flip had been switched and I suddenly could only see the parts of my body that weren’t what I thought society would accept. Because I was so focused on being accepted and liked by my peers, the parts of myself that I didn’t think fit the mold were the parts I grew to loathe.
Fast forward to high school. I wasn’t big by any means, but when I looked in the mirror, all I saw were my stomach rolls. All I could see was my crooked nose, large front teeth, pimply forehead, and the dark hair above my lips. All I could see was half a girl, reduced down to magnified imperfections.
My depression played a part in my sudden weight gain the summer before my senior year and that was really the hardest part of my uphill battle. I always thought I was chunky, but when I looked over old photos throughout the recent years, I saw that I wasn’t fat at all. If anything, I had been underweight. But by then I had gained twenty pounds and felt like a bloated cow. Not only did I have all the beautiful women in media and in my school to compare myself to, I also I had myself from the previous years. That was really hard.
Fast forward again to the first two years of college. By the time I hit college, I was thinking less about my weight and more about my face, my voice, and personality–some of my insecurities born from my lack of adult development. I was still figuring out who I wanted to be and because I didn’t know who I was, I felt like a nobody–a person not interesting enough to get to know. I really depended on my boyfriend at the time and put all of my insecurities in the backseat. I have a boyfriend. How ugly can I really be? As absolutely horrible as that train of thought sounds, that was how my mind worked back then. I defined who I was based on the person I was or was not dating.
Fast forward to the last six months. Here I am, almost twenty, a size six, still crooked-nosed and figuring my life out. The only difference now is I am so in love with myself I almost have no words to describe this foreign feeling. I honestly never thought I would lose my insecurities or self-loathing. I’ll be honest too and say that they aren’t all completely gone. I still struggle with whether I’m skinny enough or hairless enough. I’m not perfect by any means, but none of that really matters, perfect or not. I am confident and social and overall a more positive person. Part of my confidence came back after a somewhat nasty break-up, but if I’m being completely honest, I think I pushed myself to try new things and meet people and do things I was scared to do. For the longest time, I lived my life like a sad girl on the outside looking in, but it never occurred to me that there was a door and all I had to do was walk through it. I never thought I could be a part of the crowd or on the upside of happiness and confidence. Yet here I am.
It’s easy, and in many ways difficult, to stay out on the sidewalk in the rain looking into the window at the party. It’s easy to feel bad for yourself and hate yourself and let self-pity consume you. It’s hard to stand up to the bully when the bully is your own mind. But you don’t have to be your own victim. I never thought I would be where I am now and while I was getting to this point I never thought, “I’m going to be self-confident and love myself." All I knew was that I didn’t want to hate myself anymore. I didn’t want to drown in my own negativity for one more second.
Hating yourself is easy, but loving yourself is even easier. It’s easy to say our society has unfair standards for how people should look, be or act, but it is so difficult to realize that it is OK to break from the mold and love all the quirks that are a part of who you are. Nobody is supposed to fit into another person’s skin, nor should they. It’s easy to flip your middle finger to society and try to be yourself, but it isn’t so easy to get rid of the nasty little voice in your head whispering insults and lies. You don’t have to be anybody except yourself and if you don’t know who that is, that’s perfectly fine too. I’m a strong, confident, independent young woman and while I may not be perfect, I love myself and that is enough.