I have always been relatively self-conscious. As I got older it just got worse. I hated the way that I walked, the way my voice sounded, and how I looked, but above all other things I hated my personality. I always felt like I was much too flamboyant or that I annoyed everyone around me simply by existing. When I got to the ripe old age of 12 I did everything I could to stop annoying people. I became a much quieter person and I ended up pushing away a lot of people that were close to me and making my self-loathing 10 times worse. To deal with this I began making self-deprecating jokes. The people around me continued to laugh along so I continued making them.

It was a force of habit to keep making these jokes. I began to make them in front of people I wasn't even that close to by accident. One day I was at a captain's practice for speech and while we were talking I made a quick joke about how much I must have been annoying her. Instead of laughing along she just looked at me and said “Annoying? Grey, you are the furthest thing from annoying. You light up a room when you walk in and people love your presence.” I had just laughed and changed the subject back to speech but I couldn't stop thinking about that. Throughout the rest of the practice I thought about that and in all honesty, didn't get much else done. What she had said kept looping in my mind as I attempted to make sense of it.

When I got home it was still fresh in my mind. I honestly couldn't bring myself to believe that someone thought that I wasn't annoying. I struggled all night thinking about if she had been joking or if she was serious. I went back and forth in my mind, struggling to accept that she had even said that. Most of my thoughts consisted of self-deprecating and denial but there was a piece of my mind that stuck on to what she had said. Like a tiny flicker of light in the dark cavern that was my self-hatred. My self-loathing and the little bit of love I had for myself were at war and at times, I honestly couldn't tell which side was winning. In all honesty, my subconscious held hope that maybe my self-love would win and I would be able to exist in peace with who I was.

The first full day that my self-love was winning came a few days after my captain had complimented me. I was still at war with myself but I was coming to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn't as bothersome as I had made myself out to be. The day I  had almost fully accepted that was an amazing day. I didn't feel the need to wear makeup as I did so often to hide my insecurities and I felt fine in a t-shirt and leggings whereas before I would have worn a loose-fitting sweater and sweatpants to hide my body away. I had felt more confident in myself on that one day than I had in the past few years combined. I felt as if I could be who I was and didn't need to alter myself for the approval of other people. There was still that part of my brain telling me that I was making a fool of myself but, for the first time in years, I was able to push it away and ignore it. I was able to take a deep breath and actually appreciate myself for who I was. 

Nowadays, I have my ups and downs but, doesn't everyone? The sea of self-loathing that I used to drown in constantly is now more of a pond. Sometimes I fall in but I am always able to get myself out. There are days like before when I want to hide away from the world and fear that I’m not good enough but they are very few and far between. The days where I love myself are growing more frequent all the time. I’m not saying everything is peachy. I’m in high school, everyone has some degree of self-hatred in them, however, things got better. I can now look at myself and be proud of who I am on a good day. I can allow myself to be surrounded by people like my speech captain, who help bring me up and not push me into the pond of self-hatred. I may have won the battle, but I haven’t won the war.