Learning to Love Myself

When I look at magazines my heart sometimes crumbles. 

Seeing images of these GORGEOUS girls with their gorgeous bodies makes me jealous. Seeing them in their bikinis and their little skirts with thigh gaps and flat stomachs kills me. When I was younger I would have KILLED to look like them. To be able to wear a bikini with confidence, to be able to wear whatever I wanted and look good, this was my dream.




photo courtesy of http://colorful.bigbangfish.com/

As I grow older I often find myself walking around the mall. More often than not I tend to spot something that I adore, either a dress or some jeans or a cute top. I rush to the display to search for my size and then return empty handed. This happens a lot. It happens again and again and again till I want to go into a corner and cry. And sometimes I do. I'll cry in the shower, I'll stand naked in that mirror picking and prodding at the fat under my skin. I'll jump and watch the fat jiggle underneath, then to only turn around and burst into tears.

When my boyfriend holds me I am self conscious. When he touches me I sometimes want to shrink into a shell. With the fact that he can feel every roll and every inch of my body that I hate. He has seen it. And yet he still calls me beautiful, and sometimes, I wonder if he is saying that to make me feel better.

My entire life I grew up "fat". When I was in middle school I had already reached that 180 lbs and by high school I was 200 lbs. I would always hear "All you need to do is eat better." or "Just exercise and you'll be skinny." What people didn't realize was that I did exercise and I did watch what I ate and counted calories and such. No matter what I did or what I tried. Nothing Worked. And so I grew to hate myself.

But it wasn't just my body I hated, it was me. The entire me. With my body looking as it did, in my eyes I was disgusting, worthless. My self hate grew and grew and grew. It grew so large to the point where my self hate started to feed off onto my friends. And that made them hate me. Without realizing what I was doing, I started to lose everyone I had cared for in high school.

When senior year came around my life changed drastically. My whole world shifted, some for the better, some for the worst. We lost our home, the home I had grown to love, the home I had lived in for nearly 16 years. It was gone, all in the blink of an eye. So we moved in with my grandmother. For a year I lived there. For a year I shared a room with my mom. And it took that one year to change everything.

It all began my senior year. I felt new, like maybe a fresh start at a new school would give my life some meaning. In a way, it did. I'm not sure what exactly helped but there were two teachers that truly made an impression on me for the one short year I was there.
The first one was Mrs. Woodcock, she was gorgeous. From the tips of her toes to the hair on her head she was wonderful. Her personality shined through everything. Mrs. W was the schools art teacher, art just happened to be one of my favorite subjects. She would never ridicule a student for their work being "horrible" (even if it was REALLLY bad). She gave criticism that helped you and moved you forward in the world. She does'nt know this but she helped me through a lot that year.With my world being turned upside down I found that art was my stable point. Mrs. W showed me that I could do anything, I could be anything, I could grow and create and learn to love through art... and that's what I did. Mrs. W helped me start to love myself once again. In the most simplest way too. Through art.

You can ask yourself, "What does art have to do with loving yourself?" Let me show you something.



Photo courtesy of www.wikiart.org

This painting is by artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir and titled simply, "Woman After Bathing". The painting, created in 1896, depicts a larger woman drying off. Now what does this have to do with self love? This painting is considered ART. This painting of a larger woman with meat on her bones and rolls and thickness is ART. She doesn't look like the women in the magazines and online, she is REAL and she is gorgeous. A man sat down and thought she was so beautiful that he had to make her last forever, in a painting.

This got me thinking. If a woman of a larger size is artwork, why not consider myself art as well? Afteral I look like her size, I have rolls and stretch marks and thickness and meat on my bones. Why do I hate myself for it?

And slowly I began to learn to love myself more and more.


Learning to love me for me was one of the hardest things I have ever done in life. Every day I still struggle with loving myself. Life is a work in progress. Much like clay, you have to keep working with it to get the results you want.


Today I am 19 and 206 lbs. I am a pant size 16 and a shirt size XL. I am PROUD of who I am. Yes I still struggle with loving myself, and some days are better than others.


 With 19 years of self hate you begin to ask yourself, is it really that bad? Am I really fat? Am I really ugly? The question I answer to myself today is no. I am beautiful, I am perfect, I am a fantastic individual that is worth living.

And so are you.

xoxo
Courteney