celestial

xi. LOVING YOURSELF IS NOT AN EASY TASK [...]

xi. LOVING YOURSELF IS NOT AN EASY TASK WHEN THE REST OF THE WORLD IS TELLING YOU TO HATE YOURSELF

written: april 2 two thousand 16
posted: april 3 two thousand 16

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they ask, "who do you love?"

and she answers, "myself."

and they all look at her with disgust as her eyes are fixated on the mirror. she smiles at herself and is happy with what she sees. but can they say the same thing?

they throw the word NARCISSIST at her and it circles around in her mind. it does a million laps in under a minute. and so she swishes the word around in her own mouth and spits it back at them as if it's the filthiest word she's ever heard. how dare they make a mockery of her. how dare they try to put her down for loving herself rather than someone else for a change.

a relationship with yourself is just as important as a relationship with someone else. and god forbid she understand her own needs and puts herself before others. they throw the word SELFISH at her, too. she rolls her eyes and says something along the lines of "fuck off!"

maybe we should stop teaching our girls to cover up their bodies and stop planting the idea in their head that they are not good enough; that they need to be completed; that their body is something to be ashamed of. maybe then it'd be loving yourself would be an actual concept people could wrap around their brains. 

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"BODY IMAGE CONCERNS MORE MEN THAN WOMEN, RESEARCH FINDS"

he avoids looking at himself in the mirror. he wants to cry every time he does look at himself but he hears his parents' voice in the back of his mind, "real men don't cry!" as if having human emotion would make him any less of a human. 

he looks at skinny boys and wonders why he wasn't born like them. he's internalized the word FAT as an insult and the word SKINNY as a compliment. it's not an insult, it's just a word. there's nothing disgusting about him but he doesn't understand. the rest of the world is telling him something different.