As a young girl, I didn’t know why people hated the way they looked, the way they acted, the way they were. It was like nothing was good enough for them, and they had to kill themselves just to make it better. They thought they were “ugly.”

I never knew why these things happened to people and what caused it. At first, I thought people did it for the hell of it. I thought it was a cool thing. All of these things happening and I couldn’t understand one bit of it. That all changed when I turned 10 years old.

That was the hardest year ever for me. That’s when everybody's opinion started to matter, even boys’. If they said I was ugly, I was ugly. If they said I was pretty, I didn’t believe them because people told me I was ugly so much that I just thought they said it out of pity.
I was always jealous of my friends. They got the cute boys and I didn’t. Their teeth were straight, they didn’t wear glasses and they were lighter than me.

I started going into a phase where I hated how I looked. When I found out a guy liked me, they only liked me because of what I had and not what I had to offer. In a way, I liked that because to me all that mattered was that he liked me and that was it. Besides that, I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I had to show my body just to get their attention. Not only that, I had to be someone I wasn’t and I wasn’t comfortable with that. But I had to do it. I had to keep them around and if that was the only way, then I’d do it. But I hated it. It bothered me because my friends always had boys that liked them for who they were and not for what they had. My self-esteem was low. I learned how to be myself and have self-esteem, the hard way. It happened because over the summer, I was mostly by myself and back in school, I was always around people. For once, I was by myself, which mesnt that I didn’t have to hear anybody’s opinion but mine. A part of me, that I never knew was there, just yelled at me and said “ Why are you being like this! This is not who you are. Nobody’s opinion matters. Get out and show everybody!”

Now I’m more wiser and more aware of who I am. I know I’m beautiful no matter what. Inside and out. I know I don’t need anybody to tell me I am beautiful. We all are beautiful.

I get so annoyed when I see or hear people saying that they are ugly or telling someone else that they are worthless and nobody will like them. It makes me want to stand up to whomever said that and say that they don’t have the right to say if someone is beautiful of not.

Billboards, advertisements, magazines, and things that have a model to represent them get me mad. These are the reasons why girls and boys have self-esteem problems. They feel like the have to fit a certain criteria. A certain body type, skin, color of eyes, bone structure. Why can’t we just be who we are and see that we are all beautiful? Why can’t we stop judging and thinking and start knowing?

The mirror can lie to you. It only shows what’s outside, not the inside, when the inside is truly beautiful.