Self Love, Discovery and Acceptance

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To me, nothing good ever comes out of comparing one's self to someone else, but then when we aspire to become like our role model, that's where the positive impact lies.

This positive impact can only manifest when we first discover our self, knowing who we are and what we actually want to become. That way, we won't find ourselves fitting into the bad character traits of our role model.

With comparison, we lose sight of who we are, and I was a victim of this. For a long time coming, I always compared myself to my friends. I wanted to live their life and have what they have because I felt their life was better than mine.

Every so often, I mentally live their lives, I would imagine myself in their bodies going about their days just to have a feel of what it would be like to live like them and this made me lose out on how amazing my life is.

The act of me always picturing myself in my friends' life, made me suffer from identity crisis.

I did not know who I was, I could not even plan my life because I did not know what I wanted to become, which always caused me to keep making last-minute decisions.

From my teenage years to early adulthood I was always in pain, like I would always feel this pain in my heart, a pain that comes from lack of contentment.

I got to a point in my life where I felt like I wasn't doing enough. I also felt like I wasn't good enough and probably deserved every ill-treatment that I got.

Likewise, I guess it is safe to say that I never loved myself growing up.

Not only that, but I felt I was ugly and my so-called girlfriends/classmates will always ask the guys in our class to do a ranking of the most beautiful girls in class because they know the guys will choose me last, and they will all laugh at me for being ugly.

They trampled on myself esteem, and I felt like an outcast. These they did because I already gave off the energy of self-hate, low self-esteem and timidity. The thing is, how people treat you as an individual is often a reflection of how you treat or see yourself.

Despite always standing out intellectually, and coming out the best or among the best, I still did not feel I was enough or contended.

Regardless of coming from a loving home, I still wanted to be like my friends:

The one who always gets picked as the most beautiful girl in class not minding her poor academic performance.

I wanted to be like the next beautiful girl whose hair was so long and her skin as white as snow, not minding her poor hygiene and lousiness.

I wanted to be like the one who has the nicest clothing and accessories, not minding that her mother has been abroad since she was a child and has never felt the warmth of a mother.

Not only that, but I wanted to be like the richest boy in class whose father has the most popular and biggest transport company in my state, without minding that he lives with his grandma because his parents were divorced and moved on with their lives.

The list goes on and for every time I compared myself to these people, I hated my life, I felt like I was struggling and not living the life that I wanted, I was in this constant battle with life, and I was loosing.

Getting into Uni, I toned down a bit with the comparison, probably because among my friends then I was the one who seemed to have it easy with life.

We graduated and became full-blown adults, and it seemed like my life relapsed again as my friends started doing well and excelling in their chosen field of earnings. I started struggling again and going back to my teenage years of hurt.

I got back on the comparison train and would stalk my friends and watch them upload on social how exciting their lives are.

I was doing this until I met a friend who's a spiritualist, and he started counselling me even without me saying anything to him.

Some questions he asked me that changed everything were, "how do you want your life to be better when you are not grateful for your achievements? Don't you know gratitude is the key to getting more from life?” And just like that, this guy started counting all my achievements, most of which I just told him passively. He said, see how far you have come, how many young girls your age can boast of what you have?

I was speechless because I have never taken cognizance of my accomplishments and best believe I have accomplished a lot!

After the session with my friend, I did my own self therapy and counselling. I took a trip down memory lane and started visiting the lives of all my friends I have ever compared my life with and saw they weren't perfect.

They actually had their downside and challenges, and then I asked myself, "can you go through what they have gone through? Would you want to experience what they have experienced?” And my answer was No!

That was the last of me comparing myself to others. I have grown to love myself, be contended and grown within my space and capacity.

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This is a response to the Augustinleo prompt day 13 in collaboration with Emotions and feelings. You can join in here

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