As a 19-year-old college student, insecurities and societal pressures run high. Since as long as I can remember, I have never felt whole. Whether it be my anxiety, my fears, or my differences, something was holding me back. I was never living my life the way I wanted to.

But in all honesty, I never really knew how I wanted to live my life. I knew I wanted to make a change but never did until I needed to.

When I was a freshman in college, I transferred universities. That was by far the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I have never been at such a low, and trust me, I was at a low. So once I did transfer, I never had the time to focus on me. I was too busy dealing with a new school and adapting to that.

I was also dealing with being the new kid on the block. And with that, came the constant struggle of fitting in. As you know by now, I have terrible anxiety and make rash decisions in the moment. Sometimes, this can be looked at in the wrong way by others which ultimately leads to more anxiety on my part. My intention is to never make people worry, but like I said, I make very rash decisions.

So basically I was thrilled to be somewhere new, but at the same time so lost with everything, including myself. I did not know who I was, who I was becoming, or what I wanted to be.

Whenever I had my moments, and trust me, I had several, I put self-love in the back of my head. I wanted to blame something or someone else for what I was feeling.

The things in my life have clearly defined who I am but I just recently learned that self-love and self-experiences are different.

Living without loving yourself is barely living and that my friend, is the number one most important thing I have ever taught myself.

Life is good and I was so used to bad things happening I started to create bad things because I felt I deserved them. This was seen as dangerous to some people and rest assured, was never my intention.

Once I pinpointed the exact things I was doing wrong and how to improve on those, I started to. There's only one way to go and that is up.

So now... How did I really learn to love myself?

I lost someone who meant something to me recently and needless to say, I felt like shit. Sadly, I had felt this before. For the same exact reasons. I was letting relationships, boys, and self-hatred define my happiness.

How dumb.

So I woke up one day and said fuck that. I need to make a change.

As a teenage girl, it's hard to not compare yourself to your peers or social media but its really important to stop. I deleted my Snapchat, which 100% helped. I also started to compliment myself. I would take things I would normally shit on myself for and completely change that. Instead of looking at my face in the mirror and picking out all my flaws, I decided to love it all no matter what.

I realized that self-love is not thinking you are complete, but knowing you have other things to pursue to become complete.

I stopped letting my incidents define me. We are human and we all make mistakes. My mental health issues were not about to ruin my life so after almost letting them, I made a change. I stopped judging myself as well. My actions good or bad were me and whether I was going to learn from them or not, I needed to accept them all.

I also started to be more confident with not only myself but others. I would get dressed for a party and tell myself I looked unreal and took that confidence and went up to the people I would never talk to and would start to talk to them.

I also started doing everything I knew I was scared of doing. I was always told to do one thing a day that scares you, so I began to. Texting the guy first, wearing a new color, dancing on a table, trying new foods, buying clothing I would normally never buy, and ultimately loving me and everything that came along with that.. decisions included.

I accepted my mistakes and my downfalls and climbed back up.

Self love is not just accepting yourself, its accepting yourself in all of your chaos.

So I became okay with all of this and changed my opinion on myself and since then, have never felt better.