I see it now. "Love yourself before trying to love somebody else", they say.

This phrase always used to make me so confused, and so fucking mad.

What does that even mean?! I have so many insecurities, I can't possibly start loving every part of me. My teeth aren't straight, my hair is too thin, my voice is too low, I'm not witty or funny, my skin's really bad, I am so damn shy, I wish my tummy was flat, I don't fit in anywhere.

I don't like those things about me and that will never change.
This is how I'll always feel.

And you're telling me I can't love someone until i turn this around? Well fuck.

Though I see it now.

I see that relationships are always so exhausting to me because of how hard I try to be the person I think people want me to be.

I realise that i've been distancing myself from people all my life because of how terrified I was that they weren't going to like the real me.

I understand that I blamed my parters so many times for not letting me express myself the way I wanted to when in reality it was all me.

I locked myself in a prison of steel and blocked anything real, good or bad, from coming in or out, like your stereotypical high school reject.

I feel sorry for repeatedly breaking my own heart for years.

I feel sorry for every person who tried to establish a connection with me and ended up with an empty, lifeless, inauthentic version of myself.

I feel sorry for putting so much unconscious pressure on every single person i've met to entertain me and bring out all the qualities in me that I've been desperate to see flourish for so long.

I am a goof. I'm passionate, dramatic, imaginative and wise. I'm sensitive, I'm obsessive, talkative. Flaky, naughty, lazy, childish, artistic and a risk-taker. I am me.
And for some odd reason, being me seems like an insurmountable hill.

But I don't care. If I have to spend the rest of my life trying, then so be it.

I am done being an impostor.
It's tiring. It's empty. It's claustrophobic.

I deserve to be free.