Self

It feels like I’ve been unhappy with my face, my nose, my weight, my eyebrows, the tone of my skin, the blackness of my hair my whole life.  Last year, I started to think of myself differently.  All the voices around me telling me that I don’t meet a standard of beauty and that I should prioritize how I look to others over things like respecting myself started to sound stupid.

They are stupid.

So in an effort to not allow myself to be mentally trampled, I started to look at what would I do for my body if i loved it? What if I thought it was already beautiful, what if I loved it AND respected it? What if I thought that I wasn’t some flawed version of what I could be?

Things got better.  I significantly reduced how much I looked at other people and made a snarky judgement in my head. I took care of myself better. I got more involved in exercise, I dieted to feel good, and I lost weight to get faster at running, not to fit into something to please someone else.

It was, it is glorious. Of course, you don’t undo 18 years of feeling like you don’t look good enough in 12 months. I still have my moments when I think something negative about myself or someone else. But now I recognize it as it happens and I shift mentally to thinking about who that person is, not what they are. I think about that to myself too.  Who I am so far outshines what I am that just that shift in thought redefines how I feel about myself.

Anyway, part of that self acceptance comes from taking photos of myself. I find people who are comfortable in front of a camera and believe they look great in the photo are usually self-assured people.  I still don’t feel safe in front of a camera lens.

Fake it til you make it.

So here’s a photo. No makeup. No done hair. I don’t care that it’s my profile, which I have the tendency to think that I look unflattering from.

Its me. Plain and simple.