These past couple of days have been funny for little ole me. You know those days where you just can't find anything you like about yourself? -- Yea well I was having one of those days, a couple of them actually.
Living in this world and society, where so much of what we contribute to success and happiness is how a person looks or how we look ourselves - it gets hard to separate ourselves from that and remember what is on the inside that really matters and more importantly who we actually are besides all the stuff we have and the way that we look.
We all have our insecurities, I sure do, and although they may not make sense when we say them out loud, it doesn't mean that they are any less real. We are our own worst critics, hell I can tear myself apart just as well as the next girl but at the end of the day I have to remind myself that all those things that I was just complaining and worrying about are all superficial and shallow and no one really gives a damn at the end of the day!
For me, I have always been insecure about the way I look - which is typical (everyone deals with it at some point) but I definitely struggled with not looking the way all my friends did when I was little and as I went through school - all the way up through high school. My biggest insecurity besides my skin color was my hair. Oh how I battled with my hair over the years. I had long beautiful hair up until the 9th grade, when I decided to chop it all off just underneath my chin (bob style) because it had gotten so damaged from trying out a new hair stylist. I remember when I had to get that hair cut, I was mad, sad, embarrassed-- all the above! Throughout high school all I wanted was to have long beautiful hair again, I even thought about getting clip in extensions and everything but I could never commit because I was afraid that my friends and the people I saw everyday would think I was trying to be something I wasn't and that getting extensions randomly one day would be too obvious. Ultimately I was afraid of being rejected and also afraid of rejecting myself and what I wanted as a result. So I waited until I went away to college, with people I had never met before and knew nothing about me or my insecurities to finally get hair extensions.
Well, let me tell you - my oh my did it make a world of a difference just in the way I felt. I could give two craps about what other people thought and even though people would compliment me on how beautiful I was (am) - to this day I don't wear hair extensions for other people, I wear them because I want to and because it makes me feel like myself again. Now, don't get me wrong my hair has definitely grown back to be on it's way to be super long and beautiful just like it was years ago, but now I wear my extensions because I want to and to help my hair grow and not because I have to.
Although I still have my insecurities about my hair and other things as well I am dealing with them and I am grateful for them because without these insecurities I wouldn't have anything to work towards or make me human. I am not perfect and I know that, but I deal with my insecurities in the best way that I know how and that is doing what makes me happy and finding the things that I LOVE about my self like my smile, and my beautiful skin color, and my legs! Wow, I have soo much to be grateful for. I have beautiful parents who blessed me with great genes and I know that I am beautiful in their eyes, in God's eyes, and in my own eyes and I am okay with that.