Being myself

Being myself is one of the hardest things for me. When i was younger, I used to do it easily. As time went on, I let society tell me who I should be instead of me being who I actually am. I feel like the society does that. Makes you less yourself. Makes you feel like your true self is in someway flawed. Like there is something wrong with you. There isn’t though. You are fine. I am fine.

There are times when I wish I was thinner. I used to let it hold me back. I finally realized that I could spend my whole life trying to be thin, trying to fit into other peoples ideas of beauty. Let them set the standard of how I should be. Honestly I let that happen. I became obsessed with losing weight, trying to be thinner. Forcing myself to be unhappy in my pursuit to gain acceptance from others. Trust me when I say that what others have thought about my weight as rarely been positive. I’ve been shouted at on the street, I’ve been teased at home. I was out walking to school one day, and a young man felt the need to shout out ” Where do you think your going you fat fuck?!” I had an aunt who thought it was cute to call me squish and fluffy, and insisted on squeezing me all the time. Both of these situations hurt immensely.  Though my aunt, didn’t mean to hurt me, the young man did. Society told him that my weight was unacceptable and that it was ok for him to be cruel to me. Its my fault I’m fat, if I didn’t want to be shouted at, I would just lose the weight. I know society told him that because society has told me that too. That if I want to be accepted, I should have to change in someway.

My weight isn’t the only thing that society made me feel self conscious about. I used to hate the way I looked. I refused to take a picture without makeup on or for the longest time leave my house without it on. I was afraid someone would judge me. I felt I was not pretty enough without makeup, that all ‘pretty’ girls took a large amount of time to look good. Eventually I realized I’m fine just the way I am. I began to feel better about my weight after reaching some ‘popularity’ on Facebook a while back. There were men and women who would add me and the proceed to tell me how beautiful I was(it should be noted that I was still going through my refusal to be seen without makeup phase) and how the found my weight to be attractive. I realized that I didn’t need to wear makeup all the time to be ‘pretty’ when i took a photo of myself one day, checking to see how my hair looked. I saw myself, happy and smiling and realized I like the way my face looked without makeup. I promptly stopped wearing makeup. I still take care of my looks, don’t get me wrong, but now I focus on making sure my natural beauty is preserved, rather than cake on chemicals daily that I don’t need. Also if it takes longer than twenty minutes, I refuse to do it(unless I’m attending a special event.)

I’m still learning to be myself. I’m learning that I may not have that many people who enjoy my personality, but I shouldn’t want to spend time with people that don’t like my personality anyways.

I’m getting better at being me. Its taking a while, but I’m getting there.