Self-Worth.
Super fun time topic!
This has come up a lot in the past weeks, and after a conversation last night, I feel like I want to write about it to kind of get some of my ideas down and out for my mind to sort itself.
Amidst being around Georgia Tech, trying to graduate, self-growth and change, relationships developing and ending, and learning about myself, I've had a lot of people question my self-worth and self-care over the past months. So this may be a little befuddled, but here are my thoughts.
One thing that has come up a lot is people reflecting on my weight - I've lost a lot of weight over the past two years, through tremendous effort (and to some degree just through stress), and am proud of myself for being healthier and feeling better.
That being said, I've had more people than I can count comment that I'm 'skinny', 'thin', or just 'going down an unhealthy road'. Allow me to be crude for a moment - seriously people, what the fuck are you saying?
I have not gone to the doctor recently for a BMI/BFA recently, but I am not lacking in body fat. My mother, lord love her, is chief among these offenders - it may just be cultural propensity to fatten your children up, but I've felt hugely antagonized about my weight for the past several months. While I'm smaller than I was - while I have a waistline and more defined bone structure in my face now - I am not too skinny.
PLEASE, understand this - I am not saying that I'm fat. I'm not saying I need to lose weight. I am saying that I have curves - I still have 'problem areas' and bits of myself that have a significant amount of fat on them.
I am, however, ok with that.
It's taken me (literally) YEARS to come to terms with my body and my self-image. Just like with every human on this planet, I don't find my physical self perfect - but I do like myself. I know how blessed I am in terms of being pretty and relatively able to control my body weight if I put my mind to it. I am coming from the direction of being someone who used to hate herself, though, and am trying to look at myself realistically now.
Another factor that affects the way I address myself is my complicated relationship with humility. When I was little, I took the biblical lessons of humility and pride to heart. It has always been an effort for me to control my pride and to keep myself humble. And when I compliment myself, when I address things I've done right, I always have a quiet voice in the back of my mind reminding me that I need to stay humble. So sometimes, I can't take a compliment well.
EXAMPLE: I know in the past that I was *terrible* about receiving compliments about my good actions or about my figure. I was horrible about it. I didn't believe it sometimes, I didn't think I deserved it sometimes. Whatever the reasons, I have a hard time accepting compliments, even after years of learning to mentally understand how to. It's a struggle that I see with a lot of young men and women my age, and after all of these years of trying to learn, I feel an incredible amount of empathy towards them, as they face the same challenges.
So, to sum up - while I disagree on some compliment thrown my way, while I have a hard time seeing specifically what others are seeing, physically, I don't hate myself. Please don't think I do. And mentally, I'll beat up on myself a lot - in my previous post, I mentioned disliking myself. It's a mental battle every day. The way we see ourselves is incalculably different than others see us - I see myself inside and just see all the things that I think should be worked on and fixed, and oftentimes, I see the aspects of myself that I don't like. So do we all.
I however know that I've been formed to be a complex, unique individual, and God wouldn't want me to be anything different than I am. I can take solace in that. And so should you.
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