Learning To Love Myself

There was a very long period in my life where I couldn’t smile the way that I’m smiling in the above picture.

Mostly because that’s the smile of someone who’s feeling good about herself; someone who is happy with who she is and feeling confident about the person she will become.

In that moment, I loved myself.

And looking back on this picture, I do love myself. I love the way my eyes crinkle and the way my smile looks symmetrical. I love that weird piece of hair coming out of my glasses and I love the way my hair is falling onto my forehead. I love the way I’m smiling so hard I can barely tell I have eyes and I love how I just look so genuinely happy and at ease.

I love that me. I love the me I am today.

But the ‘I’ from before? To be very frank, I hated myself, though nothing much has changed since then and the moment captured in the picture.

Self hate is something I deal with on a regular basis. I hate almost everything about myself. From the way I look to the way I act and down to the way I write.

For almost my whole life, I’ve struggled to grasp the meaning of self love; to love myself regardless of what other people feel about and think of me. I never really understood how such a thing was possible, really. I couldn’t fathom looking at myself in the mirror and thinking to myself that ‘damn, I look beautiful’ or ‘I am totally rocking my personality’.

It just didn’t come to me, no matter how hard I tried. It constantly felt like I was in the dark, desperately trying to feel my way for the door that would open and enlighten me but never actually getting to it.

And so I continued to be lost in the maze of self doubt, self hate and, sadly, self harm.

I was so consumed with finding a way out of the self hate inside of me that it wasn’t until I almost gave up, took a step back, and re-evaluated the situation, did I see the root of my self hatred.

It wasn’t until I said to myself ‘hey, all of this pain and anger I direct towards myself on a daily basis must’ve come from somewhere’, did I see what was truly happening.

I didn’t hate myself for no reason. I hated myself because of society’s expectations of a perfect human being.

Long story short: I didn’t fit the bill in any way whatsoever.

I wasn’t kind beyond measure. I didn’t donate money to every poor soul on the street. I didn’t spend time volunteering at old folks’ homes or animal shelters for I was not passionate about serving the community. I didn’t pay particular attention to a friend of mine having a bad day; I was having my own ones as well.

I wasn’t beautiful in the way society thought I should be. My eyes were too small, my forehead too big and my lips too thin. My eyebrows were sparse, my nose too flat and my whole body too short.

I didn’t have big dreams of saving people in the field nor in the surgical room.

I didn’t have the drive in me to want to make people smile regardless of how I felt inside and- I just wasn’t a nice person. I wasn’t a perfect human being.

Even now, I’m not.

But that doesn’t matter, for that is society’s expectations of a perfect human being. I realized that I didn’t have to bend and break myself to fit into this little box called “perfect” when I am so much more than that.

Not only that; on this earth filled with 7 billion people, the number of perfect humans is probably less than a million. Granted, I’m taking a wild guess here but I’m sure that the percentage is small.

I realized that if other people can go about their lives without hating themselves the way I hated me despite they too not fitting into society’s standards, then I didn’t have to. It hit me that I’m my own person, who shouldn’t be dictated by standards that are materialistic.

That’s when I started understanding that I wasn’t such a bad person after all. I realized that I did not deserve the self hate that I burdened myself with.

I still loved my friends and my family, and even though I couldn’t care less about every 7 billion of us, I cared for those around me.

I work to lift the financial burden off my parents and while it may be only two people on this earth, it’s still two.

Though I’ve only helped a few people find their way around shopping malls, and while I might’ve felt more annoyed than happy to do so most of the time, I still helped them.

And though my face isn’t perfect; my nose not sharp enough and my forehead a bit too big, I realized that I’m still beautiful in my own way. I realized that perfection does not equal beauty for if it did, then nothing would be called beautiful.

For perfection does not exist on this earth.

And if it doesn’t, why should I expect that of myself and beat myself down for not being a living embodiment of it? Why should I strive to be something that simply does not grace this earth?

And with this full, long-winded realization, I started to love myself.

Not all at once, of course. Such a thing as self-love, sadly, doesn’t hit you all at once. Even now, months after my realization, I’m still learning to love myself.

Slowly but surely, I’m learning to love my smile, the way my cheeks lift to squish my eyes, and I’m learning to embrace my personality in its rawest form.

And I still don’t love myself. Not fully.

But I’m sure I will get there, the same way that I’m sure you too will get there.

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Originally Published on Terri’s Thoughts
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