22 & not a clue

My boyfriend showed this video to me in bed the other night, and after it finished I was in tears and he smiled and said 'you don't see who you really are'. That got me thinking, no I'm not going to start Carrie Bradshaw style asking ridiculous rhetorical questions, but we as women are really quite hard on ourselves. The simple act of describing our face to a stranger does not marry up with how that stranger would necessarily describe us.

Yet we're becoming a society who take 'selfies' and send 'sexts', we are giving away our bodies soo freely these days thanks to the internet. It's this perpetual contradiction that we take photos of ourselves and yet can meet a stranger and struggle to say one positive thing about our physical selves.

I've struggled with my body image all my life. I am still struggling. I have never met a woman who is  100% happy with herself and I don't blame the media, I see it more that we don't promote a healthy outlook on our bodies within society from a young age. Mum better not be reading this, but daughters don't grow up being told to love themselves, instead mothers take the chocolate bars away and furrow their brows. Words like diet and weight creep into everyday language as that little girl creeps towards tenuous teenagedom. There's suddenly this sense of urgency that she'll become a hefty teen, life will be difficult for her, the other kids will pick on her because she's heavier.

Life will always be difficult, instilling a sense of foreboding about body image at the tender age of 11, 12, 13 and beyond isn't going to help. We need to teach our daughters to love themselves. Then teach them to make better choices, involve them in cooking, make them do at least one kind of sports or regular exercise from an early age. Basically, encourage being healthy to be happy over being thin to fit in.

It is my sincere hope that this generation of women, who have grown up with slut marches, fat shaming, thin privelege and rise of the plus size modelling world will go on to raise their daughters to love themselves first and appreciate being healthy second. Loving the skin you're in should be a given.

Last Saturday a good friend dragged me to the Liverpool match. Despite being two of four women in the entire pub, we had a great night. That being said there was one incident that added a slight ugly undertone to the evening.

At 22 I am becoming a veteran of the dating world. I have online dated, I have speed dated, I have salsa classed & I have committed the cardinal sin of blind dating. But then with the internet who isn't blind anymore.

My last salsa class was going well up until the moment where I pointed out to my partner, (a bald man with a Hawaiian shirt) that this was all rather like a wheel of fortune but with cock.
My last fore into internet dating led to my best friend & I lying on our single beds in onesies with facebook open in one window messaging each other & Plenty of fish open in another whiling away the evening pressing the refresh button. In the dire hopes that the psycho path who had been messaging us both for the past week had replied.
In the end, nearly a year later, she ended back up with her ex of four years & I with the boy I met at uni two years before. It was all a massive waste of time.

Now I'm not shitting all over internet dating. I am shitting on our approach to dating as a whole. I mean what is the point in all this effort spent when the guy is or was probably right under your nose?

If he isn't then just stop. We have a phrase in Ireland; 'Would ye quit?' So just do that. Stop.
Get on with it. Get on the plane to Australia that leaves the man you finally realise you've loved all along behind. Because that's a better idea than staying in London where you haven't a clue what you would do so run away to the sunshine.
Not such a good idea, granted. I am a hypocrite. But my point is that life is short & if we all stopped searching so much & took time just to deal with our own shit then maybe we'd be a better person by the time he / she found us.
This comes from the woman who google searches her ex and stalks a certain relative's instagram and twitter in the hopes of a mention of the engagement that we have all been expecting since 2009.

Internet dating was exhausting. You would check it obsessively. It was like the sexy version of Facebook only instead of a friend request you got an ego boost & possibly a glass of wine if by the 10th message he had finally asked you out. There was soo much to-ing and fro-ing that eventually my nickname amongst close friends became the human-calendar because I had that many dates. I sound arrogant but it was purely because I was determined. Determined to be entertained? Perhaps. Determined to meet the one? Certainly.

But why ? I was 20, practically a foetus & yet I was clawing away at the dating scene like a mid 30s crone with an unfortunately placed mole.
What is it about love and life that sets a fire under us that cannot be put out until we have met someone? And what the hell do we do once we've met someone but go and fuck it all up anyway?

I know for myself I have had to seriously teach myself to be happy alone. My mantra being that 'I am lonely, but I am not alone'. I have wonderful friends, a mad hatter family and a very good life. I have had to self-validate because that is worth more than the validation I seek from others. If I put importance on seeking and gaining the approval of others then how will I approve of myself in spite of others.
Teaching yourself to love yourself is a life long journey. But if you start down the path too late it becomes soo much harder to forgive all the things you told yourself you hated for all those years.

My mother has drilled into me to 'take the fucking compliment'. The man I love tells me to 'repeat after me, I am wonderful' & yet here we are & I am one of many women who won't look in the mirror when I get in or out of the shower. I mean seriously. If you cannot love who you are then who can? The list of these sort of self-help anecdotes is endless & frankly I find them patronising. But in truth, if you don't start sorting out the fucked up child within early on in adult life it is only going to lead to chaos later on. I know this because I have met my parents.

How do you do this ?
You start listening to your thoughts and the re-occurring negativity that circles that brain of yours and reinforces all the things that make you believe the negative things you think about yourself.
   For example, I hate my arms. I am 5ft 11" with a 36F chest & wear a size 14. Yes I am an hour glass but when I eat and drink how I please I look more like rugby player. This is my negative thought pattern. I tell myself I have huge shoulders & man arms. I don't, obviously. So I tell myself to like my wrists, and then my arms & I tell myself to stop looking at my arms in shop windows. I make myself consciously choose to challenge that negative thought. That is an irrational thought. You don't look like a rugby player, but for gods sake straighten your back.

Sound familiar?

Try it. It isn't a simple case of telling that negative thought to fuck off, more saying why do I think that, is it actually true, no, its rubbish I tell myself, ok then stop. Shut up. It isn't true. My arms are fine. Not rugby like at all. Wash & Repeat.

Your biggest relationship in life is with yourself. If you cannot accept most of who you are, if not all, then how can you expect anyone else to love all of you the way that you want to be loved.

You do not need to love someone to love yourself .You do not need to be loved in order to love yourself. You need to learn to love yourself, slowly, body part by body part. One negative thought at a time.

Good luck.