THE COURAGE TO BE ME

Being positive about ourselves and how we look is a good thing, it is something we all should try to do for ourselves because in a world where we have so many people looking like God took more time to create them than others, it’s easy to feel demoralized and angry about our bodies. I know how it feels after taking a good bath and wearing that beautiful dress and then staring at yourself in the mirror admiring how handsome or beautiful you are, only for you to go out and you feel you suddenly look ugly. I let that get to me for a long time and I never saw myself for what I was until I decided to not let things like that get to me.

It was hard. I see people daily and I always thought they were more beautiful, more attractive and more intelligent than I was. I wished I could be more but I had to come to the agreement that this is who I am and until I come to terms with myself, I’ll only keep growing this silent hatred for myself and envy for others. It was at that point of this realization that things changed for the better. I accepted myself for being the way I am. I started being positive about my body. I cared less of what others have to say and cared more of how beautiful I was regardless of the so many things I thought I lacked.

Mind you, I never lied to myself either, I was sincerely to myself. I knew the body features I lacked. I told myself the things I was not and the things I was, why? This is so that when someone else tells me these things, I’ll be like “oh! Are you just noticing that?” and they will have nothing more to say. Over the course of my life, I have learned that the best way to stay positive is to always keep the negative in mind too. Never hide your negativity. The moment you hide it, it becomes a weakness you can never defeat.

The courage to face the best of ourselves even in the face of negativity is what gives us the edge over everything. Most times we think we are optimistic because we haven’t really faced any negative experiences. The moment we do, we realize just how much we are pessimistic. But when we face our fears, our faults, our weaknesses, we gain an edge over them and never feel insecure when others try to make us feel that way. I stopped lying to myself that everyone was better than me. I stopped lying to myself that I was better than everyone. I told myself that I am me and no one can be like me even if they tried in a thousand years. And that is because we are all unique in our own ways.

I’m not just body positive. I’m me-positive. I know me for me. There is nothing you think you know about me that I don’t know about myself and that is because I try as much as I can to always stay honest to myself. Lying to myself about anything was a quick way to defeat myself even before the battle begins. Telling ourselves lies about ourselves only makes us feel bad when others are unthoughtful enough to rub it on our faces. And at that point, it is clear that it might get toxic the more we run away from the truth of ourselves. We have to learn to keep things scaled. Don’t tell yourself only the positive things, also tell yourself the negative things or else someone else will and you might just end up hating them for it.

Thank you for reading through. ❤️