When I love something, I really love it. I’m hopelessly romantic, selfishly optimistic, and genuinely empathetic. I’m emotional but realistic, dramatic but sensitive, and unapologetically expressive but introverted. Basically I’m just your typical Leo with a heart too big for my body.
These personality traits inevitably come through in my writing, which isn’t exactly the best thing to happen when you’re writing for a public audience. Last semester I went through a bit of a rough patch, so when I sat down to write this column that week I couldn’t help but spill everything that was happening. I told every detail and every emotion I was feeling, but I knew I couldn’t and wouldn’t actually publish it. And, appropriately, at this time I came across a quote online that made everything make sense: “Resist the urge to make a performance of your emotions while you are still in the midst of feeling them.” I took this very literally and as a result took a week off from publishing this column. I know that seems like a pretty dramatic response, but, like I said, I’m a pretty dramatic lady.
It took me a while to fully understand who I was. For a while in elementary and middle school, I actually denied who I was as a result of being bullied and picked on for being so “sensitive” and crying at everything. All I wanted to do was prove them wrong, so I convinced myself that I wasn’t sensitive and suppressed my emotions for a while. High school was slightly better, but the voices of those people who made it seem like being sensitive was a bad thing were still circling around in my head. But eventually I turned 18 and went to college, both in the same month for me, and at that point I couldn’t really be anybody but myself. Figuring out who I am was never easier than when I was forced to be myself in front of people I was meeting for the first time.
I’ve come a really long way in terms of accepting who I am and how I look. And just writing that sentence makes me realize how incredibly silly yet sad it is that so many of us don’t like ourselves. Being okay with ourselves should be a natural instinct, not something we have to work towards or search for throughout our lives. There should never be a moment where we tell ourselves, “Okay, I’m happy with myself now,” because we should always feel that way. Loving yourself shouldn’t be some sort of graph where you color in a box each day that you feel more confident in yourself. There’s no such thing as a ranking or classification for the attractiveness of humans; we’re all just humans, and we’re all on the same level. But unfortunately, for most of us, loving ourselves can sometimes seem impossible.
My advice to anyone struggling with their self-esteem is to work in steps. The first step is to make time for yourself, and the second step is to get to understand your own personality traits. The third and final step is to start changing your mindset from “I don’t like how I look ” to “I’m my own person, perfectly pretty.” Working in steps is important instead of tackling something as detailed as your self-esteem head-on. In the words of Robert Frost, “The best way out is always through.”
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