365 Questions--January 19

A quote that inspires you

"Who is this I've tried so long to fight?

Filling my head with lies that I'm not good enough
Then I heard something in my ear
Tell me I'm perfect, now that I know the truth
Time to show and prove

Every part of me is a vision of a portrait
Of Mona, of Mona Lisa
Every part of me is beautiful
And I finally see I'm a work of art
A masterpiece"

--Jazmine Sullivan

I've mentioned in a previous blog about how I really struggle with feeling good enough. My self-esteem is not the highest when it comes to my physical traits. As a kid I never really felt pretty. I struggled with feeling comfortable with my skin color. I think a lot of that had to do with the time period I grew up in. When I was growing up, there were not a lot of dark skinned women on TV. Black women were all over TV, but there were maybe a handful that are as dark as me or darker. On top of that, I was one of the 2 dark skin girls in my group of friends. It really weighed on me. I never thought bleaching my skin or anything that extreme. I was maybe 22 or 23 when I felt okay with my skin. 

But even before I got comfortable with my skin, I was still struggling. It was like the more comfortable I got with my skin, the more uncomfortable with my body. For a long time, I was pretty thin. I wasn't super skinny. I was skinny but solid. In college, I gained weight around the time I was getting ready to graduate, but that wasn't enough to me. I'm not curvaceous like the women in my family. Like I said, I'm solid, but I have no hips whatsoever, and it frustrates me sometimes. I would look at myself and wonder what my exes or just men in general saw in me. I'm not shaped like the women on TV or that are all over social media. 

And then Reality Show happened. For those of you who don't know, I am the BIGGEST Jazmine Sullivan fan. Ever since the Fearless album, I had been following her and was listening to her music she released before she got signed. It really upset me when she stopped doing music. Everybody goes through things. She just happened to be going through something when she stopped with music. Funny thing is, she was in an abusive relationship and so was I. I physically left the relationship in 2012, but I still kept in contact with the guy known that I shouldn't. When Reality Show was released, I had had my final little run in with the guy, and it got really ugly. He told me nobody would ever love me and I was never gonna be good enough for anybody except him. I t really had me in a bad place and so when I listened to the album, and Masterpiece came on, it was like my eyes were opened. I may not look the way I want to look, but I'm still beautiful. I may not have been good enough for him, but I'm still a masterpiece.