Everyone always told me that I couldn't be insecure about my body because I'm skinny, but weight isn't the only thing that people can be insecure about.
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| Middle school me. |
Being comfortable with my self image is something that I've always struggled with. It was really bad in middle school. I spent so much time comparing myself to my friends, constantly thinking that my friends were prettier than me and that I would spend my life being single because there was no way any boy would want to go out with a girl who had hairy arms, gap teeth, a unibrow and a big nose.
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| High school me in 2007. |
In high school, I started to find different things to be insecure about. I'm actually a pretty oblivious person, and I don't realize a lot of things until someone points it out to me. That's where a lot of my insecurities stemmed from. Someone told me that I was wearing my pants too high and that made me realize that I had a short torso. I stopped tucking in my shirt and started stretching out my undershirts so they would go past my hips and make my torso look longer. Someone told me that I was probably supposed to be born a boy because a part of my neck bone sticks out a little, making me look like I have an Adam's apple and "only boys have Adam's apples." People would point things out about my body that I never even noticed, and I started to call myself ugly.
It wasn't until my junior year of college that I was finally able to silence those voices and stop worrying so much about how people viewed my appearance. I realized that it didn't matter what people thought about me; it only mattered how I viewed myself. If I continued to allow everyone else's voice to be louder than mine, then where would that leave me?
Everyone is insecure about themselves in some way, which is why I don't understand those who feel the need to point out negative things about another's appearance...or anything else about anyone for that matter. People have enough trouble trying to create a positive self image of themselves; they don't need anyone else's opinion affecting it. I mean, it took me 21 years to finally be comfortable with how I look, and a lot of that has to do with the negative words that people were putting in my ear (some of which I'm still trying to silence). Wouldn't it be nice if we could just ignore the negative things people say about us and stop comparing ourselves to celebrities and the people around us?
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| College me in 2012. I'm so lucky to be me, because no one can be a better me than me! |
I'm still fighting my way through my insecurities, but I'm incredibly lucky to have gotten to a point where I'm comfortable with how I look (it's not like I can change it! And now I don't want to!) and to have family and friends that support me and a boyfriend who thinks I'm beautiful no matter what.
