Justine Manzano To many who meet me, I probably come off as stupidly self-confident. Wait…stop. Only if you’ve met me after 2012 or so. Anyone who met me before that knows that to be untrue. My confidence was hard-won. It wasn’t until my thirties that I began to feel comfortable in my own skin, able to brush off what others may think of me. Before that, I was a very anxious person trying to make everybody love and approve of me. Honestly, when I think back on those days, it’s depressing.
I’ve been thinking about the way I saw myself in those days quite a lot lately. In the midst of helping my mom clear out our childhood home, I stumbled across a lot of old mementos from that time and, with that, came some pretty stark reminders of where I came from.
I used to think I was fat. Like, really fat. And awkward as hell. I was never comfortable in my own skin, and I didn’t have very many friends.
And then I started looking through all of the pictures and I found that I was indeed awkward and geeky. And yet, I was not fat. Or ugly. And I was often surrounded by friends. None of that should even matter. But at the time, it had really bothered me.
And the more I looked at the person in these images, the more I realized how difficult it was to see who I was then.
To the outside world, I was beautiful. Weird. And a completely healthy weight. I looked confident, and I was surrounded by friends and family. I looked happy.
I wasn’t.
It’s a strange thing looking back and seeing the perception of the outside world. Suddenly, I could understand two very real issues I’d often struggled to understand.
People don’t see what goes on behind your closed doors. If you look happy, people will assume you’re happy. They have no reason to believe otherwise unless you tell them. When I was younger, I used to feel like people didn’t care that I was going through some pretty deep depression, or problems with my family. But it wasn’t that they didn’t care. Although, some people do not know how to deal with other people’s issues, so some of them may not have. But others would have if I had confided in them. Instead, I assumed they knew I was suffering and turned away. That wasn’t fair. But we learn and we grow.
The other thing? I really thought I was fat. And ugly. And that people didn’t like me. And yet a lot of those people still reach out to talk to me today. And when I look at the picture, I look so much more beautiful than I remember. And oddly thinner than I thought I was. But even knowing I was not fat or ugly as I believed, I get angry at myself as seeing this as such a negative. And not being more positive about my body.
You don’t always see yourself clearly. You can’t always tell how other people see you. It took until I was thirty years old to feel comfortable in my own skin.
But for those of you who are reading this because you’re here for a YA Author, speaking to YA Readers, I hope you can believe me when I tell you–
–You WILL find your place. You will find your people. The girl who felt lonely in high school now has the perfect circle of friends and chosen family. People who help me cope with my struggles. You will begin to accept yourself for who you are and will stop caring what others believe or what others like. You will wear the things that make you weird now proudly. You will learn to love your body exactly as it is.
Your negative thoughts may never go away. As a person who copes with mental illness, I can tell you it’s a process and some days, you’ll feel like a teenager again, and one wrong word will take you down. But other days? Other days you will soar.
Soar high friends. And remember–one day you will look back at yourself, back because that you is now in the past, and you will be shocked at exactly how beautiful you’d always been.
Till next time…