L.G.A.

When learning about yourself, there may be some things you realize about yourself that you may and may not like. But it’s not having these traits that is the problem, it’s more so learning to live with them and yourself. At the end of the day, living with yourself is all that matters. You can’t expect others to put up with you if you can’t even put up with yourself. In the story, Yours Truly, after a young girl lost her grandfather, she went through a couple phases of grief. When you’re grieving, you go into a depressive state where you begin to find a source to channel how you’re feeling. You may also eat a lot more or a lot less. Or, in some cases, neglect personal responsibilities.

When you love yourself, you don’t constantly seek the approval of other people, or for them pretend they care. When you don’t love yourself enough to realize you deserve better, no matter if you’re a nerd, gay, fat, or whatever, you don’t need everyone else’s approval to be yourself. At the end of the day, you have to live with you. In that moment where you completely love yourself, you’re not taking any crap from anyone, and you’re not neglecting who you are when someone comes along to show you love, then love won’t be such a stranger to you. If anything, you will embrace it more.

I am a person who has had many bullies growing up, but this one in particular had more in common with me than she realized. She was the worst kind of bully, but eventually I had enough. Eventually, we became hard to separate. During the time I was being bullied by other people, too, I was rather shy and afraid to stick up for myself and often times she stuck up for me. As we bonded more, I realized we had similar problems. We were both insecure about somethings and had problems at home, but she pushed me to embrace my sexuality and defend myself. Ever since, I have not let a soul disrespect me or hurt me. I love myself enough not to allow anyone to bring me down or hurt me. I would say sometimes some of us need a little push to embrace who we are, even if it’s just one person who embraces us other than ourselves.

When I was allowing other people's opinions and thoughts to matter so much to me, I became this fearful person I barely recognized. It took a lot of endurance and soul searching for me to find me again. During this long time, I was being abused physically and verbally in the foster care system, which didn’t make what I had to face constantly in school with bullies and rude teachers any better. People would say all kinds of bad thing about me. For some time, I believed them and I would constantly try to change things about myself.

Until one day came where I just had enough, and that was a day of reckoning. Now, the way I work is I will respect you if you respect me. Anything less than that we cannot be friends. At this point, I love myself too much to allow the next person to make me feel less of myself. Looking back on what I let people do to me, I had to forgive them for what they did, but I also had to forgive myself for allowing them. If you notice, the majority of bullies either like you, are jealous of you, or they have their own personal issues that have nothing to do with you.