Where Are You?

2

Do you feel loved by yourself?

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I'm learning to love myself. I have struggled with myself since puberty hit. I have never been a small person and I will probably never be a small person. I know I could be healthier then I am but even at my best I was not slim. It's hard when the world has an ideal body type and you can't fit into it no matter what you try. I know everyone experiences this in some way or another because unfortunately society has made how our bodies look a prime topic. The best advise came to me though through RuPauls Drag Race. Season 8 theirs an episode where Bob the drag Queen says "Find something about you that you like and focus on that. If I don't like my face, if I don't like my skin, if I don't like my weight I think to myself I have nice teeth and it may just start with one tooth. Look at that tooth, that's a nice tooth man. And then once you can accept that little thing about yourself, you can just accept you for who you are."

I took this idea to heart today, I sat myself in front of a mirror and looked at all my features determined I would find that one thing that I liked. Hilariously enough the one thing I was immediately drawn to was the thing I was always self conscious about when I was younger. I have Blue-Gray eyes, they're abnormal for my family and I guess in general. Most people in my family have either really rich brown eyes (I was always jealous of them) or those bright blue eyes, you know the eyes you see and go "holy crap those are blue". Throughout school I remember people always getting in my face though and looking at my eyes, most of them refused to believe me that they were real and I wasn't wearing contacts. Middle school is violent though, the rumors started to fly like crazy that I wore gray contacts and lied about them being real. It sadly actually continued all the way till I got glasses and people finally realized I wasn't lying. When high school rolled around my family moved and I had to transfer schools. I remember being so paranoid that the rumors were going to start again, especially because my 8th grade year I decided to get contacts instead of glasses. Thankfully though the small town school I transfer to didn't really care. They were more intrigued with wanting to get to know me which was something I wasn't used to coming from the "big city".

Circling back though I want to love myself, I know it'll be a process but following those wise words from Bob I'm going to start it by telling myself everyday "you have nice eyes" and eventually I'll accept that and move to the next thing. Of course this is only scratching the surface though, I've only talked about surface level appearance love. I want to love myself inside and out. The inside part though I started earlier this year, and boy or boy it's not easy. I went into everything being so negative though and so I beat myself up constantly for my own short comings. You know how people tell you you're your own worst critic? Yea they're right. Things that bother me about myself, others don't even seem to notice. For example I have a kinda aggressive love when I joke around with people, sometimes I worry that they're going to not think I'm kidding and I tell myself I need to stop. I've even apologized in the past for my humor but every single time I do this people look at me like I'm crazy for apologizing.

Circling back yet again I started by picking an aspect of my personality that I like and I'm going from there. I'm an over caring person, I always have been. I do everything in my ability to make sure people feel comfortable around me and I want to make sure everyone feels included. I was always the person who would people watch and learn their little things. An example of this is my significant other, he doesn't like bread that has seeds, or grain, or anything really on it. I only learned this by watching him one day scrap off all of the seeds from his bagel before eating it. So now anytime I get bread I always try to get one that doesn't have anything on it because I know he enjoys that. I know people say you shouldn't care so much about others but I think theirs a healthy mix. You shouldn't care what others opinions are about you or a topic per say, but you should care about that person and their well-being.