Don’t Take My Love Away From Me

Staff Writer: Gia Gunderman

What is self-esteem? By formal definition, it’s confidence in one’s own worth or abilities; self-respect. Now sometimes this word can be taken, and people will create their own word out of it for themselves. However, there are some people who just don’t grasp the concept of it or just live their life not knowing if they have good self-esteem or not.

I find this quite prevalent in the younger generation as these childhood to adult years is usually the most difficult for most teens. What do I mean by that? I mean that growing up can be really rough for some and a lot to handle on a daily basis, like bullying, harassment, harsh comments regularly, their own peers being rude to them and society standards all can take a toll on someone’s self-esteem.

Photo Credit: The Crown Chakra

There are so many aspects to what can affect one’s self-esteem, I could probably write a book about it; but I believe that people need to take this more seriously. Imagine living your life constantly comparing yourself to others, being told by your own loved ones that what you do now is not good enough, having everything about you being criticized and then hating the body you were born in.

It’s miserable to be in a constant state of just hating yourself and depending on others to make you feel even worse about yourself and creating a defense mechanism out of it, thinking it’s making you stronger, I don’t believe that’s a way to live at all. Self-esteem is something people need to learn to love and have before they go out into the real world and experience what it’s like.

Photo Credit: Pysch2Go

Life is going to throw many obstacles towards you that’s going to make it hard to live every day, but if you learned how to have self-esteem and love for yourself, it’ll make it a little bit easier to get through the day. Almost every single teen today has either low self-esteem, a false sense of self-esteem, or they live their life just not caring enough to know it’s important.

Matthew Ordava said, “When I was in high school, I remember people constantly made fun of my nose, saying it was big and ugly, just the worst things you could hear, and it stuck with me for a long time until I realized that my nose represents my ethnicity and culture, and no one will take that from me.”

There are many ways to increase self-esteem that people don’t even know of, but it could help them gain a better bond with it; for example, cutting people off that just criticize you for every little thing, stop making self-deprecating jokes to yourself, find qualities about yourself that you’re good at or love about yourself and hold onto that, try a new style or something different with your appearance that will make you feel better about yourself, tell yourself daily that you are worthy of love and that no one else’s thoughts or words will control how you live, they are nothing to you unless you let them to be.

You are worth way more than what you think or what other people have said about you. My mom has always said, “Love yourself as you only have one life, and it shouldn’t be wasted by wanting to be someone else, you are unique, but you will have to be the one to show what makes you unique. There will never be another you.”

Teens need to start sooner rather than later to love themselves, there are people that aren’t going to like you or be nice to you, but they won’t matter after you leave school, you are your main priority and no one can force you to think otherwise, you are important and worthy, as time goes on, things will get easier, but patience will be your antidote for your open wound.