I'm grateful that I've come to a point in my life where I'm able to accept myself as I am. I've wasted so much time trying to be *you* - trying to look like you, to laugh like you, to be as worthy of love and life and opportunity as you. I never felt pretty enough, smart enough, witty enough, thin (read: worthy/feminine) enough.
I spent decades comparing my insides to your outsides. What that got me was a whole lot of shame and confusion.
I will never be as good at being you as you are.
Never.
Not only that, though, but you see right through me. Because when I'm trying to be you, what I'm doing is putting on a mask of what I see when I look at you: confidence, a carefree life without difficulty or the curveballs that seemed to define me.
When I romanticize your life, and envy you for it, I am losing my opportunity to get to know you, to identify with you, to accept that I really am neither better nor worse: I am just as wonderful, just as worthy, and just as likely to experience the joy, pain, tears, laughter, fear, and faith as you. I'm glad that I don't have to compete with you anymore. I'm glad that I can stop comparing myself to you, and start happily co-existing with you. I'm glad that I no longer feel that I am entitled to the good things that happen in my life, and wounded beyond repair by the bad things that happen.
I think I'm sharing this because it's important for me to recognize these facts about myself. I can't shy away from my go-to insecurities and unhealthy narrative. I have to embrace me, one day at a time, and recognize that these insecurities and this narrative were helpful to me - even for a short time - but that they are no longer helpful. I can let them go. I can change my narrative. It's never too late. And now, as I am trying to live a healthier lifestyle, I know that I will bump up against my decades-old fears and insecurities. But I can share them with you, let them out rather than keep them in. They don't belong in me anymore. There's no place for them anymore. Not here.