Self-esteem is not what it seems

I’d like to think for most of my life, I’ve never cared what other people have thought about me. I’ve never kept up with the trends other people were obsessed with. I’ve never felt pressured to look a certain way or change the way I act around everyone. I consider myself lucky to have had little outside pressure affect me.

Then middle school happened. Besides the general feelings of being in middle school with rampant hormones and feeling insecure 24/7, I started to gain a bit more weight. As a kid, leggings used to be baggy on me and I was a normal weight. I can’t recall what happened but puberty was not kind to me. Braces, thinking I was cooler than I was and sudden weight gain caused me to second guess myself. I remember having to change in gym class and sucking my stomach in because all the other girls were a lot thinner than I was. 

However, one of my proudest moments was when I was able to tell a group of girls who sat at three empty chairs around me that I didn’t care if I was popular or not when they sat with me, clearly reading a Minecraft novel and sporting braces. I’m glad I didn’t fall to their “promises” as I know it would have been along the lines of fake friendship. I’ll also say I was glad my parents didn’t allow me to have social media in middle school as I know it would have been detrimental to how I viewed myself.

Those inner thoughts continued into high school. While I would occasionally complain about how I looked or felt, most of the time I kept these thoughts to myself. My self-esteem also wavered when my friends started getting into relationships. My friends were getting all this attention, why wasn’t I? When I eventually did get Instagram, I would see people I went to school with getting all these comments on their posts and I wondered why people weren’t doing that to mine. It took me a while to realize I had to stop seeking validation from others. I had a good group of friends who supported me no matter what and a loving, supportive family. 

By the time I was in my senior year of high school, I felt confident in not following the crowd. I remember when I was nominated on the Homecoming court and I felt so shocked, I thought I was going to get sick. I wasn’t popular and I certainly wasn’t in hundreds of clubs. When I talked to a few acquaintances, I heard some people nominated me because I was kind and I wasn’t someone who was seemingly handed the nomination. Knowing there were people in my corner rooting for me, some of whom I’d never had a conversation with, made me feel happy in knowing I didn’t have to be the prettiest person in the room to make a connection with others. 

In college was where I started to thrive. I didn’t have anyone from my hometown who knew me growing up and all the awkwardness I went through. I felt I was truly living my best life. I was eating well and starting to incorporate yoga into my daily routine. The only time my self-esteem started to tank was when my mental health took a turn for the worse and my anxiety controlled my life for almost a year. During that time, one of my biggest symptoms was nausea, causing me to not eat despite desperately wanting to. Over the course between my sophomore and junior year of college, I dropped nearly 15 pounds. During this time, people who didn’t know my struggles, said “wow, you look great!” That really started to mess with my head. It made me wonder if I was overweight and I felt like I was back in middle school. Of course, I couldn’t say “Oh, it’s actually my mental health making me lose all this weight, thanks!” It took me around six months or so to get away from the mentality that my mental health causing me to not eat was making me “look better” than what I had previously and it was not my fault that was a symptom of my anxiety.

Are there still days where I’m insecure about how I feel? Of course, everyone has those days. Recently I saw a TikTok that said “When you die, no one is going to remember how good you looked, what your weight was or how rich you were. People are going to remember how kind you were, your sense of humor and how you cared for others.” I take that to heart because I would much rather be known for how I treat others than being a part of the in-crowd. Trust me, pretty faces will fade away, but a good heart lasts forever.

Caption: As I’ve gotten older, I’m starting to care less about what other people think about me, and if that means treating myself to a good slice of pizza, so be it (Courtesy Emma Johnson).

Write to Emma.johnson.5@mnsu.edu