First of all stop! You are wasting a lot of your youth hating something that doesn't matter. I know from experience that you are spending way too much of your time thinking about your imperfections and valuing your worth off of your body or your appearance. You are worth so much more than the number on the scale, the size of your jeans, or the amount of stretch marks you have. stop pulling yourself apart, because you are beautiful and you are loved.
Please take it from a girl who has spent every day since middle school picking herself apart. I oftentimes wake up in the morning and my very first thought is how can anyone like me I'm too fat, I'm too ugly, my skin is too bad! But for what? how does picking yourself apart day by day make anything better? We must speak positive words about ourselves each day and that positivity will become our truth, rather than perpetuate negative thoughts about ourselves.
When you are with your friends, you spend a lot of the time pointing out your flaws (and sometimes the flaws of others). I know it's not your fault you just say what you feel, but your friends don't know that. When you are constantly saying look how fat my thighs are, look at all of my stretch marks. or look at this giant zit on my nose. This does one of two things, it makes your friends start to pick apart themselves in a hope to make you feel better (which helps no one) or they acknowledge your flaws which just makes you think about them more. Long story short, picking yourself apart doesn't do anyone any good, it just helps tear down your own self-confidence and it perpetuates self-hate.
Please stop Instagram stalking "perfect" women. They aren't perfect, all you know about them is what they choose to share on their account. They may use photoshop, they might not. The point is, stop spending all of your time looking at their perfect bodies. Spending all of your time looking at these picture perfect images does your self-confidence no good. Instead, post that un-photoshopped picture of you laughing, double chin and all, or go outside and enjoy the fresh air and get out of the negative social media world.
so, what can you do? Everyone always tells you to stop and love yourself and to be confident. But those things are hard to do when you have been tearing yourself apart for half of your life. I get it, it sucks but the best thing you can do is start slowly, don't point out you flaws out loud and only tell yourself positive things, in order to build your self-confidence. This is going to sound cliche, but I promise you that you are beautiful in every single way. Nobody cares about the zit on your nose, or the few extra pounds you gained, or your crooked smile; all they care is that you are kind and they love you for who you are and that is not defined based on your appearance, after all, we already established that you are beautiful.
So I encourage you to eat the bowl of ice cream, to take that selfie, and to openly love yourself. Because in the end, that's all that really matters.
Sincerely,
A girl who is still learning to love herself
