Why I am my own biggest fan: self-loathing to self-loving

 "Do you love yourself?" is a question I've been asking people recently, and to my disappointment most answers have been a resounding no. You might even have answered the question as soon as you read it. Whether or not your answer was yes or no, it's a question that we should all be asking ourselves.

I asked my dad this question and his response was no. Other than mentioning a few of his insecurities, he also mentioned something that I thought was so interesting and that was "but I don't want to love myself." This really surprised me, because I spent years trying to look more attractive and changing things about myself in the hope that one day I will truly love myself for who I was. It was weird for me to consider that some people don't have that end goal in mind and that self-love isn't something they strive towards at all. When I questioned this, his answer was that he would rather be seen as humble. I realised after him saying this, that he sees people who love themselves as conceited.

Now, I genuinely don't believe in the concept of being conceited, vain or self-absorbed. I think it's a concept that was created to stop people from fully loving themselves, in fear of coming across as arrogant to other people. You see, it's not in the interests of society or capitalism for you to love yourself. If everyone loved themselves, the beauty industry wouldn't be able to cash in on your ever-growing list of insecurities, the number of people undergoing plastic surgery would plummet, and people wouldn't buy magazines based on the fact the cover story is a celebrity spotted without makeup, just so they can feel better about themselves. Now, a lot of us can admit that we've felt smug when we see a photo of an otherwise gorgeous celebrity being caught off guard, looking terrible. It's awful to admit that seeing people looking bad makes us feel better about ourselves - or does it? Of course it's nice to realise that celebrities are just people who have off-days, just like us, but we already know that celebrities are just people and we shouldn't rely on the shortcomings of other people to make ourselves feel good. This concept will never genuinely make us feel better about ourselves, because we are training our brains to compare ourselves to others. This can make us feel good if we look better than someone else or if we realise that a beautiful photo was just photoshop, but it also means we feel worse when we see someone looking better than us or realising that someone genuinely is just attractive without makeup or photoshop.

Fake it 'til you make it is advice that a lot of people are given about confidence, and there is nothing wrong with that. I am however incredibly perceptive and pick up on body language that people aren't even aware they're displaying. If I have ever seen someone who comes across as 'overly confident' then it's not very long until I notice something about their body language that makes me realise that they are just faking it. To others however, these people may come across as narcissistic and people feel that it is their job to 'knock them down a peg or two'. But why do people feel they need to bring people down to their level? Why are we so disgusted in people being confident? And what is wrong with someone thinking they're 'it'?

This is why my dad has never chosen to love himself, and why many people will never choose to love themselves - because people feel that true confidence is something of a flaw that needs to be corrected; either that or people don't see it as attainable, unless they change the way they look and act, or that people genuinely have no idea how to begin loving themselves.

Well I can shamelessly and vehemently tell you that I love myself. I truly love myself and I'm really not ashamed to say it. I don't think I'm the most beautiful woman on the planet and there are things about the way I look and my personality that are not perfect, but I accept them. Much as we have the ability to overlook the flaws of others (I mean how much do we really pay attention to someone's dark circles or how symmetrical someone's eyebrows are?) I have trained my mind to overlook my own flaws. In fact, I would go as far as to see my own facial flaws as characterful.
Now don't get me wrong, it took me a long time to get to this point. As a teenager, I believe I may have suffered with Body Dysmorphia Disorder, although I was never formally diagnosed. I was diagnosed with Bulimia at the age of about 14, but this diagnosis came years after my eating disorder began. Reading my diary that I kept at the age of 11, it made me so incredibly sad to see a child put themselves down in the way that I did. I remember in my teenage years even going as far to say that I hated myself and remember feeling that I would have done anything to be someone else. My autoimmune disease and being bullied in my first years of high school also did nothing for my self-esteem. Whenever I think about the way I felt about myself in the past, I just want to go back and shake myself before giving myself the biggest hug ever. 

I just want to say that I owe a lot to my teenage best friend who found out about my ED and asked for school to contact my mum. I hated her at the time for it, but I have so much to thank her for now. I also want to thank a girl in the year above me who found out about my ED and told everyone. This was my worst nightmare, as bulimia is based on secretive behaviour, where you are constantly covering your tracks. My reaction was to deny it, to which she then told everyone I had "made the whole thing up for attention." It might sound weird that I want to thank her for doing this, but if she hadn't - I may never have realised the type of people that I was really up against, and that it was going to take a whole lot more than being skinny to be accepted by these people. In fact, I came to the conclusion at one point that the people who made my life so difficult just had something to say about me for the mere fact that I existed. It didn't matter how skinny, pretty or intelligent I was, I was never going to win. So I just stopped caring. The turning point in me finding self-love was finding the photos below, from when I was 16 or 17. I didn't feel confident at this time, but when I look at myself I realised that I should have been and always deserved to be. At this time, I was so insecure because I couldn't appease irrelevant people. So I stopped looking for the validation of others and decided to love myself.

Now I'm not suggesting that this is advice that will cure you from having any insecurities, but this is what worked for me. I don't know what happened, but I just woke up one morning and I made a conscious choice to love myself for who I was. Not the person I could be if I just lost a few more pounds or the person that I could be if I was a little taller. I decided to love myself for exactly the person that I am and the way that I look right now. In doing so, I became the person that I had always dreamed of being, without changing a single thing about myself. 

I came to realise as well that a lot of my insecurities over the years became irrelevant to me, or things that I actually embrace about myself now. I absolutely used to hate having freckles and tried to cover them up with makeup for years, but the first time I took my makeup off in front of my boyfriend, he complimented me on them. I used to hate being small and was constantly belittled (no pun intended) for it, but I actually love my height now and wouldn't change it for the world. I was always made to feel that because I'm small, that I was some sort of freak, but there are so many gorgeous people out there who are tiny, including Ariana Grande (5'1), Vanessa Hudgens (5'0), Adrienne Bailon (4'11) and Kourtney Kardashian (5'0). I also hated having big eyes as people always used to comment on this, saying I looked like a cartoon character, but then one day I got called doe eyed and it changed my perspective totally. I learned to love some of my worst insecurities that I now wouldn't change  a single thing about myself, all 5 feet of me. 

I don't think we should ever stop trying to improve ourselves, but stop telling yourself that you will be confident and love yourself when you lose two stone. Stop telling yourself that you'll start to love yourself once you get eyelash extensions or when you get highlights or when you put makeup on. Start loving yourself for exactly who you are right now, no matter what you look like. Of course you should work out, if that's what makes you happy, but do it to work towards a happier and slimmer version of the already amazing version of yourself, not because you'll only be happy when you're thin. I work out 7 days a week, because I enjoy it and because I always want to improve on my figure, but does that mean that I don't wear some of my clothes because I'll look better in them if I lost weight? Absolutely f*cking not. I wear what I feel confident in, regardless of if it would look better if my stomach was more toned or my arms were slimmer. Would you look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and think it could be improved if it was a little brighter or if some of the colours were a bit more vibrant? No we admire it for the way that it is, and you should start to look at yourself in that way as well.

So I am unapologetic and unafraid to admit that I love myself unconditionally. I stop myself in my tracks if I ever feel the urge to talk badly about myself and pay myself endless compliments whenever I see my reflection. This doesn't make me narcissistic, big-headed or arrogant, it means that I have reached the nirvana of self-love and that is something to be celebrated.

I wish I could bottle the love that I have for myself. But perhaps if you're tired of the internal criticism and you're sick of dreading looking at your reflection, you might decide to love yourself too. You might wake up one morning and decide you're the hottest person on earth. You might decide that you actually quite like the unique shape of your nose, or the gap in your teeth. You might decide that you deserve to love yourself, because you absolutely do.

So I'll end this post on a quote by Anais Nim - 

"And the day came when the risk to remain a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."