That is how I started the first draft of a speech for my required public speaking credit in high school. I opened myself up to audience, and my emotions were eventually deemed too raw for a high school auditorium. I revamped it. Putting on a fake smile, I wrote a senseless piece filled with false stories of overcoming low self-esteem. The truth was, that just wasn't me. At that point in my life I still avoided mirrors, terrified of what would show when I spent too long looking at myself. When I did finally build up the courage to look, I could see myself changing. It was as if the first glance was what I wanted to be and every second later showed off the body of who I thought I was. Ugly. Undesirable. Obnoxious. I was more than not happy in my body. I hated myself.
After my speech, which was really just a mess of well written lies practiced enough times to the point where I myself almost considered them truths, I was approached my multiply people. I even was convinced to edit and submit it to an online website. Everyone responded saying how brave I was, how it was great story to hear, and how they were so glad I didn't just talk about myself, but included boys in my statistics. All of these were great compliments, but there was one that convinced me to turn my lies of self-confidence into truths.
Hi!
I know we don't really know each other, but I am A. I am a 14 year old girl from Maryland, and I just started high school this year. I enjoy reading and wasting time on Twitter. While on Twitter yesterday I found a link to your article, speech, whatever you want to call it. I found myself so deeply related to the story and statistics that I started crying. literally crying. I just wanted to let you know how much of an inspiration you are to me. If it's okay I'd like to share my own journey in regaining my self-worth, with you. Thank you so much.
Suddenly I had someone who actually looked up to me. Someone who thought that I was a good enough role model that they wanted to share their experiences with me. It was ridiculous. Here I was, a liar. Someone who waited at Thanksgiving, lungs filled with air yet unable to breath, for my family members to feed me false statements of my beauty.
When I returned home the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I emailed her back. In my right mind I could not continue to lie to her, so I told her the truth. I was ready to disappoint the first person to ever look up to me. But she wasn't angry. Instead we made an agreement. Together we would learn how to love ourselves.
The roughest part was definitely the beginning. As our first step we looked back onto our own past. The root of the problem for us both, middle school. In middle school I started to care about my appearance more, some may even say too much. I would make myself late to the bus, worried about if the clothes looked right on my body, or cursing my unruly hair into a ponytail. I was drawn in by media's expectations. Suddenly I was begging my mom to let me straighten my hair, buy me new clothes, even allow me to wear makeup before our original agreement of 16 year old. Wanting nothing but the best for me, she let me. After realizing that changing myself would get more people to talk to me, I began to look at other ways to be more approachable. However, every time I thought I had made an improvement, trends would change and the beauty covering the magazine wasn't what I had achieved. It seemed that the standards of beauty that had always surrounded me, finally began to take me down. Unless I was skinny with long hair and perfect skin, I believed myself to be worthless. My fear that nobody would like me unless I was beautiful, and exciting, and living an outrageous life had taken over. The aftermath was a downward spiral of low self-esteem, self-hatred, and at that point, no sense of self worth. High School continued this same trend.
After reliving through all of that it seemed nearly impossible for me to actually love myself, but A stayed determined. In the midst of a history class I got an email, "5 Easy Steps to Loving Yourself." I opened it immediately because Ughhhh history.
5 Steps to Loving Yourself
1) Find what you don't like about yourself.
2) Find out where that came from and talk to somebody about it.
3) Write Positive Affirmations on your mirrors.
4) Love your body section by section.
5) Embrace the process.
At that point, One and half of 2 were taken care of. I knew exactly what I didn't like about myself, and thanks to A's wonderful exercise, I knew exactly where they stemmed from. I just needed someone to talk. Luckily there's a lot of people who want to help you get better on the internet. By the end of that week I had four people willing to listen to me at whatever point. Step three also proved to be pretty easy for me. I mean, what else would I use all that makeup I bought in middle school on. (I still only used the Wet 'n' Wild lipsticks because you should never truly waste makeup.) I received a few questioning looks from my mom, but it the end waking up every morning and receiving a compliment, at the time of day in which I usually felt the worst, was good for me.
Out of all of the steps four was definitely the hardest. By attempting to love my body section by section, I was forced to face in detail everything I saw as flaws. Fortunately for me, Bee, a person I met on the internet, told me about how when they consider themself compliment worthy, they immediately document it. I began to take photos on days where I loved my makeup, or felt super confident in my outfits. If I found a joke I told particularly amusing, I would keep it in a journal. Whenever I was feeling down I would look at it and reminisce to remind myself what my goal was. This was a major part of surviving step five.
Step five was the the most important of all the steps. We all know that stupid quote about how important the journey is, but the things is that every stop on your journey is really your destination. By embracing the process, I was able to actually learn how I got to where I was at the end. I learned how easy things become when you're actually motivated. The only reason learning to love myself suddenly got easy, was because I was at the place where I was ready to love myself. I also learned that loving yourself is not a process done alone. You'll need people who are ready to hold you up through all of your times. If I were to make my own steps on loving yourself it would look a lot like this.
5 Easy Steps to Loving Yourself
1) Get to a mindset in which you are ready to love yourself.
2) Find people to be in your corner. You'll need a person to vent to, cry own, help you distract yourself, and someone that understands 100% where you're coming from. Sometimes you may find this all in the same person, if you're like me it'll take you at least 4.
3) Every time you find a reason to compliment yourself, document it. Take a photo, write it down, etc.
4) Be honest and be open... if you're comfortable with it. Not everyone is in a place where they can tell a multitude of people about what they're going through. Heck, even I'm anxious about making this live. However, when you allow yourself to open up to people, you'll be able to find people like A.
5) Embrace the Process.
