The ghost of the past haunts her thoughts late at night. Its memories linger through the sounds of nothingness and emptiness. The clock ticks, yes, but every tick creates a deeper hole that overthinking fills. There's no comparison but a will to know more about empty lines and torn up pages of their stories. I wouldn't say it's curiosity, but it's the eagerness to know everything to help ease your thoughts. You want to understand their pain and you want to make everything better. But can you? Will the eagerness to know lead to more tears at night and a headache? Will the eagerness lead to complicating the situation? Will the eagerness to know worth risking losing someone you love? Is it worth bringing up? But what if you continue to fall into an abyss of wanting answers? I want to understand her.

What's Love Got To Do With It?

It's been a long struggle for me to learn to love myself. Like many, I've grown up being so insecure about my body and my appearance. It draws back to 8th grade when I was bullied and made fun of for how I looked and her words never left me.

Deformed alien looking Asian kid.

Her words penetrated my mind and stuck to me since that afternoon during my math class. Since then I've been so uptight about how I look when I go out. I walked around feeling like every person at school thought I looked like a, "Deformed alien looking Asian kid".  I felt I needed to change. I picked up make up and began to play around with different looks. I hate to admit that I eventually turned to social media for validity. I needed to know someone thought I was pretty. It's as if I needed another person thinking I was pretty in order to me to tell myself I was pretty. Towards the end of high school I grew some confidence and quit certain social media for a while because I felt I didn't need the attention anymore. I was fine with my body at the time but was still insecure about how I felt about myself without make up. I feel like learning to love myself without make up will be the hardest thing to love about myself. There were times I considered even changing my appearance overall but there was also more people posting about confidence and loving yourself that I had to take a step back and ask myself, "Why can't I love myself?"

Being made fun of for some of my insecurities only made things harder. I began to hate myself all over again and started comparing myself to the Instagram models because I thought their bodies were more "real" than celebrities. Despite my fight with my insecurities, I didn't really do much but sulk in my pity that this is what I'm born with.

Now I'm on my 4th year of college and I'm still struggling to love myself but I'm making improvement. I've developed hormonal + adult acne, deeper eye circles that cast a dark shadow under my eyes, lost a lot of hair, but also gained a lot of weight. I'm currently struggling to accept my stretch marks and my weight. It's tough. I used to be told I was too skinny but now with the weight I'm in, I'm told I'm too fat. It's hard finding a balance and making time to work out and eat healthy but I guess that just means I don't want it hard enough if I'm not willing to save time in my day to do so. But it's tough! When I finally do have time to do stuff, I choose to relax in bed. It's always searching for internships, keeping up my grades, doing papers, making time to go to observation hours, etc. It's a balance I need to find.

But I also have John now. I used to be shy not even putting eyeshadow around him but now for the first time ever, I can feel comfortable around someone other than my parents. I can feel comfortable to cake my face up and wipe it all off by the end of the day and he's still telling me he loves me. Although it isn't 100% self love, I'm learning to love myself more now. Unlike before, I no longer worry about impressing people I don't know by putting on a full face of make up. Now I can put on make up for myself because I simply love make up. I enjoy applying it and playing around with different shades, colors, glitter... etc. It's fun and I do it for myself. It also gives me a boost of confidence and something as small as make up is helping me feel better about myself. I'm so glad I can be comfortable around John with little to no make up and not worry about scaring him off haha. John has been an overall positive influence in my life. Sometimes life gets tough and sometimes we have our differences, but at the end of the day we always want to work things out because we don't see each other being with anyone else anymore. And I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that I found someone who honestly knows my past, my insecurities, my flaws, my temper, my mess, etc. and still chooses to stay. We had a rough start because of my insecurities setting me back but I truly feel that God helped us through the tough beginning to strengthen us to where we are today. Life has been slightly different with John around but I'm not complaining. I'm so lucky to find a new purpose to love and I'm so lucky to be loved in return. It's not that I turn to John for validity on my appearance, but it's more of realizing that I can still be loved no matter how I looked or dressed.

So what's love got to do with is? Love makes the tough times ease up. Love makes you happier. Love gives you strength to get stuff down. And love gives you new opportunities to find different ways to love yourself.