No one will ever love me more than me
But yet in a society cursed by the rails of “perfection”
I was taught to despise myself
A society who sees loving one’s self as a crime
Because in my voyage of aging from a little girl to a teen
I saw a world I had never seen
The dreams of the little girl who lived in me were shattered
Not only does this society shame me for my imperfect physicality
But it wounds me emotionally
Traumatizing my mind with its standards of “perfection”
Because in my teenage life I was taught I needed to be wanted
Not emotionally but physically desired
Because as a teenage girl I was “supposed” to belong to someone
Because in this society it’s all we dream of
I supplicate to be beautiful
Because the stinging pain in my soul doesn’t let me accept who I am
I can’t learn to accept myself
Simply because it is wrong
Simply because of some boy’s merciless comment
I wasn’t qualified to his standards of perfection
Society’s toxic and ruthless standards have nursed me from the womb
So I listened to these standards
Followed delineated instructions
So I denied myself the privilege of looking in the mirror
Because the mirror is a curse
Ashamed of my body
Ashamed of who I was
I dare not imply beauty in something so unworthy of it like my body
Because the place I was supposed to feel safe was in my own flesh
But I was taught by society to hate the skin I live in
A society who gains power by forcefully feeding me my own flaws
Denying me the right to find who I am
Where I belong
A society that teaches me to ignore the piercing voice in my head
“Let me out”
Society teaches me not to listen to who I am
I can’t physically accept who I am
Because then I am a narcissist
An egotistical teenager
Because to have love for myself is a sin
Because I can’t be anything beyond good enough
Society tells me I’ll never be good enough
Making me feel so emotionally numb it physically hurts
A society that asks me to surrender
Surrender to those who don’t deserve me
Settle for those who ask only for entertainment
A society who later classifies me because of that as a “sl*t” or “wh**e"
Yet, I have to find the coordinates in my head to love me for me
Because in the end all I will have is myself
My flesh will decay
But my mind will stay open and wise
Simply because I learned to love who I am
Because I broke the rules of society
I rebelled against its standards
Because I need to learn to love the way my braces flash as I smile
The way my glasses sit on my face
I learned to love the way my hands shake of shyness
And learn that I am worth so much more than my waistline
Because I learned to ignore the first words we were taught ‘skinny’ ‘pretty’ ‘skinny’ ‘pretty’
I learned to not to live to the standards of society and love me for me