Self-Acceptance Is Not What I Thought It Was

Self-acceptance sounds simple enough. Accept myself. Done. Easy peasy. It wasn’t until I realized how volatile I’ve been towards myself my whole life when I understood what self-acceptance truly means.

I don’t always like my appearance. I was that kid who all the other kids made fun of and picked last for sports teams. I guess that stayed with me even after the glow-ups.

During a recent Zoom call, my eyes continually darted to my image in the upper corner of my laptop screen. My skin tone was starkly uneven. My once cute bob haircut had grown out into something resembling a shaggy dog. I certainly didn’t have the bright and cheery disposition of the etheric beauty on the other end of the Zoom call.

I had just received my first ever energy healing from her spirit team and wasn’t sure what to expect, but certainly not crumbling into a blubbering mess in front of a stranger. I don’t do that.

At the gym the next morning, I avoided my reflection in the mirrors spanning the facility as usual. Who looks good early morning at the gym anyway? My gym crush, that’s who. Ugh. To make matters worse, I’ve labelled him my twin flame so he’s way up on that pedestal and I’m down here stewing in self-sabotage.

My gym crush makes me unnecessarily aghast each time I catch my reflection. Though that doesn’t stop me from detouring to the change rooms upon arrival to make sure I don’t look like something that belongs in a haunted house. I’ve never owned cute little gym outfits. Currently, I wear sweats, and by sweats I mean a whole ass sweatsuit.

This blindingly hot man I’m unable to make eye contact with is really bringing my self-consciousness to light.

However, the morning after the energy healing, I was at the gym, in front of a mirror, in the middle of a set of bicep curls, gym crush just off my peripheral, when I realized what exactly self-acceptance is. I looked at my reflection and thought, you know what? This is how I look. I look how I look. Like it or don’t like it, this. Is. How. I. Look.

I need to accept how I look so I can stop all this nonsense and just be. The resistance I feel towards my appearance is because of an ideal version of myself I have in my head. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve ever looked that good.

Every time I see my reflection or pics and the image doesn’t match with the one in my head, which is all the time, I’m repelled. I know I can look better. That creates resistance within me towards my appearance. Up until then, I had no idea because she’s been with me since childhood.

When I accepted my appearance, my reflection began to change. During my workout, each time I glanced at the mirror my appearance didn’t make me recoil in horror. I saw things that I liked about my appearance and then came to the earth-shattering epiphany that I’m not ugly. There are some nice qualities that make the overall aesthetic kind of attractive actually.

That version of me I had in my head, I AM that bitch. I started repeating it in my head like a mantra, my confidence growing along with the pitch. I’M THAT BITCH.

This is me. This is how I look. If people like it, cool. If they don’t, oh well. I know I am worth getting to know despite how I look. Caring about how others view me is too heavy of an existence. I’m realizing that I behave differently when I carry the burden of other’s opinions because I’m only just now shaking them off. I try not to stress if my hair or face looks weird. I accept it, and in that moment life feels a bit lighter.

I’m not completely healed. The self-acceptance thing is something I need to strengthen like a muscle everyday. It’s interesting how accepting how I look has changed how I see myself. My unruly hair has personality. My face is rare. My body is strong and resilient.

Once self-acceptance did its thing on me looks-wise, it seeped into other areas of my life.

I love to write, but I procrastinate to no end. If it’s my passion, then why am I not racing to my computer every chance I get?

I went within and kept digging until I got to the root. I don’t write because deep down I don’t think I’m that good. I’ll rephrase that. My writing is not reflective of what I think great writing is.

I looked through some of my writing on this platform and other stuff I’ve been working on. I hated it. I began to seriously doubt ever making it as a writer, which was a hard pill to swallow. I’ve had this dream since I was a child. This caused some anxiety, and thus began my dark night of the soul.

Perhaps I should put the writing to bed? Even on tiptoes, some dreams are just beyond reach and that’s okay. Do I want to spend the rest of my life feeling shitty about not writing? Or just not write and move through the world with the very real possibility of regretfully wondering what might have been?

It finally hits me. Accept my writing as it is. It may not be what I think is great writing. It may never be awarded a Booker Man, but for real some of those books make me question the so-called upper echelons of the literary world.

Okay for real for real, some of those Booker Mans are the reason I need healing.

I had been projecting all the great writing I’ve read onto my writing, like trying to make my sentences all pretty and prose-like, thinking that because this is what I find appealing then others will find my writing appealing when I do it too. It’s no wonder I procrastinated so much. I was sucking the fun out of writing.

Once I accepted my writing as it is, I began to write for me. My personality shows up when I’m not thinking about would-be readers, which makes writing fun. And peaceful. Now this I can do for the rest of my life.