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I'm writing this mostly as a reminder to myself and maybe it'll help some of you, but it's 5 in the morning and I can't fall asleep so I'll just get one of the many things off my mind.

I struggle with the words "You are beautiful." I've never been called beautiful. The words are foreign and the moment I hear the phrase I feel like I'll be confused and shocked and waiting for any sign of the joke to be real so we can laugh it off and move on to the next conversation. For some reason the way my body looked was supposed to dictate how I feel. If you're over weight you aren't allowed to feel beautiful because for some reason you aren't worth it. For some reason, your self worth and dignity are tied into the circumference of your waist. I was told that because I was over weight I had to feel bad, I was supposed to feel ashamed and acknowledge that there was something wrong with me. I never learned how to love myself. I learned how to nick pick every inch of my body and just hope and pray that it would get skinnier so that maybe your love could justify me and that then I would feel whole and feel like a real person. I learned how to skip meals and exercise instead because you told me that doing both would make me beautiful. You fed this poison into my mind for 6 years and I believed every word of it because why would you lie to me, right? You told me that everyone thought I was fat and that they all wondered what was wrong with me. You told me not to trust anyone but you because everyone else was liars, and that they don't care about me. I look in the mirror everyday and nick pick, I haven't once thought "You're beautiful." and meant it. Without reaching your unattainable goal of perfection I will continuously nick pick. I'll starve myself, exercise and purge until I fill the desire and temptation in my gut that tells me too. You never taught me to love myself, so I have to teach myself.

Hi, you're beautiful. You may not see it on the outside but someone else sees it and they love you for it. The circumference of your waist means nothing to what's inside your head. You tell yourself you're beautiful and eventually you'll figure out it was true all along. The size of your jeans doesn't make you a better or worse person, your morals and mannerisms do. How you treat people is what determines if you are a good person or not. You're wonderful in your own way and no one can do you like you do. We'll always wish to change something about ourselves but we just have to ask who we're doing it for. Someone else's acceptance or yours, because only one person's matters and that's yours. You get to choose to love yourself and how much to love yourself, confidence is not the same as narcissism. Be confident and proud with who you are because you are beautiful.