Insecurity

*Watch Ingrid's video before reading!*

After watching this video, it got me thinking about insecurities and how they affect us in a big way. Everyone has their own insecurities, whether it's a physical attribute, or something about their personality or mentality. Each and every one of them is as valid as the other. I figured I'd write about my insecurities and my thoughts on the topic, as I do with everything I write here, in the hope it'll inspire you to do the same. I feel like it could be a little therapeutic, too. 

I've never really told this story to anyone before, but it feels a lot easier to tell it in writing rather than face-to-face. I don't remember having anything that bothered me about myself in primary school, none of the kids picked on me or anything. It wasn't until my first week of secondary school that one of my insecurities was introduced by two boys in my DT class. They'd decided it'd be a fun idea to hold two rulers against their own noses, and say that that was what mine looked like. I was never aware that my nose was any different to anyone elses, because until that point, it hadn't been pointed out to me. But after that moment, for years, my nose became a huge insecurity for me, it still is now. Every time I looked in a mirror, I saw this massive clump of skin and bone in the middle of my face, sticking out from everything else; I saw myself as ugly. It's not that it's just long either, there's a ridge in it from when I ran into a bookcase when I was younger (I'm sure that was the story, my mum will correct me if I'm wrong!) which made it stand out to me even more. 

All thanks to those two ignorant boys, this one imperfect feature became a centre point for my insecurities and  for my misery. Anytime somebody was looking at me oddly, I decided they were staring at my nose. If kids were whispering to each other in class, it was obviously about my nose. For years, I decided that when I was older, I'd save up money for plastic surgery to make it smaller and straighter, just so I could be like everyone else. How crazy is that? A 12 year old wanting a nose job... 

That's still my biggest insecurity, but it's become a lot less prominent over the last few years. Maybe I've just got used to it, and it's not such a big deal to me anymore. Maybe after 20 years, I've stopped caring about these physical imperfections so much. Whatever it is, it's made a huge difference to me.

Do I suddenly think that my nose is perfect? Absolutely not. I'm not happy with it, but I no longer let that bother me so much. Everybody has little things that they wish they could change about themselves, whether it's a facial feature, weight, the size of their boobs (or if you're male, the size of your penis, even!), how many moles you have on your body, the amount of hair on your body, anything can become an insecurity. So if everybody has them, why do we let them bother us so much? Why don't we all just get on with them and accept that everybody is different? Not one person in the world is perfect, despite what people may think. For example, if you found one person in the world who was your representation of perfection, I can guarantee that that person would not agree. They would have at least one thing that they would change about themselves.

Everybody has days where they feel ugly, or not at their best, but nobody should ever feel like that 100% of the time. I encourage whoever is reading this, to share your insecurities, to let people know that they're completely normal. If you have a blog, please write a post in response to this, and leave the link in the comments section! If you don't, talk about your insecurities to a parent, a sibling, a friend even. Insecurities are a completely normal thing to have, don't let them take over your life.