A Person With a Body

Twice in the past couple weeks I have looked at pictures of myself, from a time I can remember being incredibly self-conscious. Self-doubting. Self-deprecating. I look at those pictures and all I see is a person with a body. That person is cute! They fit in with the people around them. There's nothing horribly wrong with them or how they stand or how they look. But I remember the shame and the doubt.

I think I can learn something from this. I feel the shame and the doubt now some days. Fewer days than I used to, but some. But if I can look back at myself and see that no matter how I felt, I looked good. I looked happy and average and young. If I can do that, maybe I can do that now. Maybe I can realize now that there's nothing wrong with how I look. Maybe I can realize now, instead of 5 or 10 years from now that the shame I feel isn't real. It doesn't have to be. Some days will still be bad, but maybe some days I can remember 13 or 15 year old me and go "it was okay then, no matter what you believed. It is okay now too"