The hardest person to love has always been YOU. Yourself. YOU.
YOU, reading these black and white words off a laptop or tablet, right now, this very moment.
YOU, who thinks that this poem can’t possibly be about you because how could I write a poem about you if I don’t even know you, right?
YOU. You with your habit of overthinking and overanalyzing, your lame puns copied off of Instagram posts, your comfortable and ugly sweatpants and your favorite TV show character.
YOU with your nail-biting habit, your black coffee on Sunday mornings, your fascination with dark lipsticks, your poems in the blue spiral bound notebook that you post on Teen Ink under a fake name.
YOU with your fridge magnets and your lucky pink scrunchy and your thighs that don’t just touch they fricken HUG. With your phone background from Scream Queens and your 54 saved Buzzfeed articles and your failed macaron recipes and your father who keeps telling you to lose weight and that one boy who you like so much it hurts a little bit when he walks by and doesn’t glance at you.
It’s easy to love other people. Other people are confident and beautiful and put together. Other people have perfect families, have successful jobs, have romantic SOs and a fashion sense. They can at least fit into a pair of jeans without the butt part being skin tight and the waist being loose enough for a puppy to curl up in there for a long nap. 
But, honestly, puppies aren’t that bad.
And, news flash, you’re not very original. And you’re not very alone.
The self-hatred … the dieting … the deleting selfies. You. Your struggles.
Are the same struggles as the person on the bus beside you, as your best friend, as the models in the magazines. Your struggles. our struggles. 
YOU. You have always been hard to love and all the self-help articles, inspirational Tumblr posts and poems written by self-conscious, hypocritical authors on Teen Ink don’t make it easier.
If you were another person, would you be able to love you?
Could you see YOU, instead of plain old you, as quirky? As funny, at least? As quirky and funny and friendly and wow, she has a pretty smile! Wow, she has a nice dress! Instead of you freckled with flaws and doubt, but her with such good posture and a lovely Instagram feed and she’s so good with her little brother.
Love YOU like you’re not YOU.