Disclaimer: this is one of those “love yourself”, “you are beautiful”, yada yada yada posts. But if you haven’t heard those words in a while, or thought them about yourself, then you should read this.
I have been spending a lot of time in front of the mirror these days, and I’m not the vainest of people (ok maybe a little bit). I had been dealing with a lot of body issues, and they were becoming consuming. I spent hours thinking and researching ways to change certain parts of my body. I hated how it was taking over my life, and it was one of my New Year’s resolutions, to get rid of these insecurities.
Like with every problem I ever had, I tried to google the best ways to deal with my problem. One of the sites had one of these self love posts we all hate (lol kind of like this one) and one of their recommendations was spending a substantial amount of time in front of the mirror every day. I forgot about the post as soon as I closed that tab, but the mirror thing kind of stuck. Mostly because I thought it was a rather silly solution.
One day after a particularly depressing shopping trip – you know those ones where anything you wear doesn’t just look right,- I got home with every intention of wallowing in self misery in front of my TV, but while taking off my clothes in front of the mirror I just stopped stood there half naked for the longest time.
I looked at everything I hated about my body, like actually looked at them. I don’t know if I’m the only one who does this, but I never really look at the parts of my body I’m insecure about. I just sort of look around it, or glance at it without really seeing it. After what seemed like forever, I began to draw a pros/cons list about them.
Of course at first go, I couldn’t find any pros at all, but the cons could fill up 2 sheets. Then I struck out all the cons and forced myself to think of only good things, even if it was stupid stuff like how my love handles would be perfect to hold unto during sex. I did for a couple of minutes every morning for about a month, and to my surprise this helped.
I stopped glancing over my body in the mirror and started appreciating it instead, focusing on everything I love about every single part of it. And I realized that hey, I am party jollof (with dodo sef), and I should never feel like less.
You are party jollof too and you should never let anything make you feel like you are not.
