You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. All my life I’ve struggled to believe those two simple words.
I know I’m not alone in this battle of self-love; there are countless girls who feel the same way that I do. It’s in our nature to compare ourselves to others, pick out our flaws, and feel insecure. Why do we do spend countless days finding reasons to put ourselves down? I don’t know the stories of other girls around the country, but as a young girl, I was the butt of the jokes, and was made fun of, and I never truly healed from it.
People would say some of the meanest things to me, some that I remember quite specifically were “You bring the meaning to obese” or “You’re just like an apple, all big and round and fat.” A boy literally came up to my face and said those things to me.
My middle school years were probably some of the hardest years of my life. I spent innumerable days and nights alone in my room crying about my self-hatred and constantly thinking to myself “If only I were thinner, if only my cheeks weren’t so chubby, if only I was pretty…”
Our girl Katie is beautiful both on the inside and outside.
My friends worried about me, my parents worried about me, I was worried about myself. I wrote in my journal almost every day; this helped to relieve some of the pain, but I was buried so deep in my emotional stress that I couldn’t dig myself out.
I sometimes go through my old journal entries from years back, and it saddens me to read about how down in the dumps I really was. There was a time when I almost saw a therapist, but I chose not to. I don’t know if that would’ve helped, but nonetheless, I eventually made it through these tough years.
Transitioning into the first couple years of high school, not much changed. I put on an act—I had a fake smile plastered to my face on a daily basis, and immediately tore it off as soon as I was home alone in my room.
However, this one-person act didn’t last. It wasn’t long before I was showing up to school with a blank stare while stuck in a melancholy mood. There were days when it was all I could do to hold back tears. I hated who I was. I prayed to God every night that if he could just make me pretty, I wouldn’t ask for anything else ever again. Well, God didn’t answer this prayer over night, and He knew what was best for me, and later on I would finally see this, too.
It was around sophomore year of high school when my best friend’s mom passed away from cancer. This was an extremely difficult time in all of our lives, but I saw how my friend handled herself; she had strength in her that I could never see in myself. I admired the way she carried herself, and how she knew that her mom was in a better place.
I wanted to find that strength she had. I suddenly realized that there are so many people in this world dealing with incurable diseases, poverty, and hunger, and yet, here I am worrying about whether I look pretty enough to satisfy the eyes of people who take advantage of these things on a daily basis.
I felt so selfish worrying about my pointless problems in comparison to so many other issues going on in the world. I began to realize that I only have one life to live, and it could end at any moment, so I need to enjoy it to it’s fullest. As cliché as it sounds, it’s the truth.
This new way of thinking caused me to make some changes in my life. I wanted to go outside and tried running. It was incredibly difficult exercising for the first time, but once I was able to run a full mile without stopping, things started changing. I didn’t lose an immense amount of pounds, but I grew into my body a little more, I felt my sadness slowly drifting away, and my mood began to lift.
I’m a girl with curves, and it’s taken awhile for me to embrace them. Sure, I would like to tone my body and become healthier and more fit than I am right now, but I’ve come a long way from where I used to be. I don’t look in the mirror with shame anymore. I actually wear a bikini in public now—which is not an easy thing to do!
I can point out areas of myself that I don’t hate—that I actually happen to like. Someone once said to me, “You may say, ‘I can’t change the way I feel,’ but you can change the way you think, which then can change the way you feel” and I find this to be extremely true. If you can tell yourself each day that you’re beautiful, then each day it will become easier to believe.
Sometimes I wish that I would’ve had a better childhood, and more positive memories to look back on, but then I wouldn’t be the person I am today. I have learned to appreciate the blessings I have, and I’ve worked hard to acquire this new appreciation for life and the people in it.
In order to love others you have to love yourself, so it has been my goal in life to learn to love myself. I am working up to that goal each and every day, and it will continue to be a life long process. But I hope to inspire other women out there who feel as low as I once did. We were all designed in a special way. We all have flaws.
No one is alike and no one is perfect, but what’s important is to remember what Havelock Ellis once said: “The absence of flaw in beauty is itself a flaw” meaning that our flaws represent beauty. I am beautiful. You are beautiful. So tell yourself that in confidence, and believe it with all your heart.