I was the type of person who could never answer questions like what I thought was my best quality, and when asked, I couldn’t even describe myself. While I loved taking photos to record memories, I found it difficult to like any of the photos I was in.
It’s not that I thought I was untalented or ugly. It wasn’t even that I thought I wasn’t beautiful or special.
I just didn’t think anything about myself. I couldn’t identify my strengths or even fully accept praise. It wasn’t that I felt they were wrong; I felt more like I didn’t do anything to earn it.
Maybe this is not uncommon. After all, I was in high school and while I had a good group of friends who I loved dearly, I was dealing with the stressful life of high school. I haven’t really thought much about my low self-esteem due to insecurities. They looked rather ordinary.
The school I attended assigned a few teachers to act as mentors for about 50 students who were there, to help us, talk to us, and make sure we were okay since we were away from home. The first time I met my mentor, she asked me to write a little about myself on a piece of paper so she could see who I was because we had just met.
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I wrote about my family, what I like and what I don’t like. But when it came to the part about my character, I couldn’t do it. I’ve been able to come up with a few things that I’ve heard people call me over the years. But even as I wrote it, I felt like I was lying, pretending to be that person.
I remember my professor reading my short list of personality traits at our next meeting. It was only when she tried to encourage me to try to come up with more that I realized how bad my self-esteem was. We spent 10 months working on building my self-esteem, starting with choosing my favorite thing about myself (my eyes). By the end of the year, I was actually able to identify some of the things that made me…well, me.
It took more work once I got home, but my self-esteem slowly grew. I have accepted the person I am. I started to love the person I am emotionally and physically. I didn’t hate every photo I was in with my friends. I started wanting to take more of them for all the fun times we had.
To most people this sounds crazy. They see people taking a lot of selfies and many people think that you either have no self-esteem or are a complete narcissist.
But these people would be wrong. I won’t say they are wrong about everyone because I’m sure that means some people are narcissists.
Because for me, every selfie represents a day when I feel good about myself. It’s the day I say, “I feel beautiful, accomplished, amazing, independent, or happy,” so I document it with a photo. The more pictures I see of myself, the more days I feel good about myself.
Yes, the likes I get on my photos help boost my self-confidence even more (because let’s be honest, who doesn’t feel more attractive when I get a like on a photo of yourself?). But I don’t need any likes to make me think I look good in that photo you posted.
My self-worth does not depend on how many likes or hearts a photo gets. I don’t take 500 photos every day and sit down and edit them until I find one photo I don’t really like but I take it and post it anyway. I don’t spend my day on Snapchat all day, forgetting to enjoy the moment without my face in it.
