Last night I posted this picture to my Instagram, tumblr & Facebook profiles. For reasons that I will explain, I put aside so many of my insecurities and just things that I've been keeping to myself to put this up because I think that these are things that everyone needs to know & remember.
In light of recent events in Boston, I was reading everything that people were posting about the fact that even though something absolutely horrid happened that was caused by one (possibly more than one) person, there were still an amazingly high number of people that were & are helping out. Giving power for people to charge their phones, giving blood for the incredible number of people who were injured in the explosions, etc. It's important to remember in every bad situation that has happened, and may happen in the future, that even though one person caused that situation doesn't mean the entire world is an absolutely horrid place. The actions of one person does not decide the actions of the rest of the world; in fact, the actions of one person may inspire the world to lend a helping hand in whatever the person did.
Throughout my life, I have had pretty low self-esteem. I felt like I was fat and I always compared how I looked to how other's looked, how I thought I was "supposed" to look. So, yesterday I got a letter from one of my pen pals, Codi, and she was writing to me about love and all of the complications that come with it, and just the amount of time you have to spend getting to know & love yourself before you can fully love someone else and have a real & good relationship with them. And the way she phrased everything just made me stop and think: because I want love so badly, should I really forsake feeling good about & loving myself just to love someone else? In the end, you are the only person you have; everyone else is temporary. So writing that down & posting it makes it feel like more of a statement and a commitment that I have to and want to keep.
(Okay, so yesterday was just an all around interesting day, because) I watched a video that Dove posted on their website. (You can find the video: here.) They hired an FBI trained forensic artist that sketched what women described themselves as looking like, and then also sketched what random strangers described them as looking like. This video really, really stuck with me, because it goes right along with trying to find myself beautiful & my self-esteem issues. The entire point of this video, is that, inevitably, you will not see yourself as as beautiful as others will. And that makes me really sad for all of the incredibly beautiful women & men, too, that I have the honor of knowing, because they can't really see just how beautiful they are. So it's an important thing to know that you are beautiful, even if you don't necessarily see yourself that way, because someone does see you that way.
"no one is 100% okay
(AND THAT'S OKAY)" is something that I have come to understand recently. It's always good to remember that nothing is as it seems, especially when it comes to how people look or even act. People hide behind the walls that they built because it's too painful for them not to. People shield themselves to prevent future pain. So whenever you see someone that seems to have it all under control, stop for a moment before you feel jealous of them and then insecure about you, and remember that they are fighting their own private battles.
To remember that I am loved is actually one of the most difficult things in my life. The only times I really think that I'm loved is when I'm with my family, or when people are actually showing me or telling me that they love me. However, when I'm alone in my room or feeling sad & can't really get any words out, that's when I need the reminder. And the thing is, I am loved. I have so many phenomenal people in my life that I don't know what I would do without, but there are just moments. Moments when I'm hearing nothing from the friends that I miss the most or from the people who I think I'm the closest with and really want to hang out with, and I just don't do anything because I'm too scared that I'll be bothering them and they won't want to hang out with me anyway. Sometimes, though, you just have to move past that and reach out, because it's possible that the people that you miss will miss you too, and the reminder that you love them will be much, much appreciated.
This last one, I feel, is probably the most important thing. Last week I watched two videos. One was by Meekakitty (link: here), called "On Empathy // RE: On Being Ugly", which was a video response to a video by karakamos (link: here), called "On Being Ugly". These are two very emotional, powerful and inspiring videos that I'm very, very glad that I watched. The main point that stuck with me throughout watching both of them, is what I wrote in the list above:
"it's not about telling someone they're beautiful when they say they aren't
(IT'S ABOUT UNDERSTANDING & TELLING THEM YOU UNDERSTAND & BEING THERE FOR THEM)"
This is possibly the truest statement I have ever heard. When I was talking to one of my friends last week, I was commenting on the fact that there is fat over where "abs" should be, and she immediately said, "Tess, you're not fat!" I was not saying that I was fat, I was merely stating the fact that there is fat on my body, and more than I want there to be. Just telling someone that they are beautiful when they say they aren't does not actually help at all. What helps more is making sure the person knows that you understand and that you're there for them, because that's pretty much all they want. Or at least, that's what I want.
This is an obscenely long post, but I hope it helped at least some of you. I hope you (whoever is reading this) are doing well, because I sincerely think that you deserve to be.
<3
