Loving My Imperfections is a post about my experience with my skin and body. It is a journey where I explain how I have found my balance in accepting myself.

self-care

I learn to Love My Imperfections and Why You Should Too

This is a personal post. I want to share it with you not to receive pity but to sort of lighten myself. And to say: we are all on the same boat. We are different, we see us way too critically and we should be more gentle with ourselves, at least I should. I will now share my story.

I have always been very critical and judgemental about myself. As I am an Aries, I love to be the best at everything without putting any efforts and I hate when others are better than me. I am an Aries who wear Aries is one of my latest fashion shoot. Plus, I have a very keen eye on everything beautiful or terribly horrible according to cases. For instance, I don’t eat things that look terrible or with a weird consistency.

In addition, anything with a bad looking packaging is no worth of consideration. In fact, when I was a kid I only spoke to girls with long hair because I wanted long hair on myself! (crazy I know!) Anyway, these are some of the hardest bias that constantly work on my mind.

I would say I am an hedonist; media & magazines surely have never helped me out in this and I keep wanting myself to be one of those normal girls with a normal body (meaning a skinny girl). Now, I am not that. I wasn’t born with the genes of a perfect skin or a perfect body and even though I exercise hard, my body doesn’t change as much as I want to. And trying to love myself is getting harder and harder.

Blogging has been a great help though. Overcoming the fear of being photographed and consequently seeing myself in the pictures has really helped my self-esteem. It is the importance of feeling magical for me. Therefore I am slowly learning to love myself as I am.

There are days where everything goes wrong, when I don’t have any clothes that fit me nicely and where I feel very miserable. Once, during my teens and early 20s, there were a lot of these days; now it still happens but I am also stronger and I just accept it.

I need to tell you a bit about my story and my two biggest weaknesses, as I consider them: my skin and my body.

My Skin

Make-up is a life saver but I have been only starting to use it this year. Plus for years my skincare routine only consisted of a cleanser in the shower and a moisturizing cream morning and night. This year I discovered there is so much more that you can do for your skin, but literally, I have never heard of it.

My skin is a acne-prone skin; I have been living with acne for as long as I can remember and I have always hated it. Like I am always been jealous of people with a natural glowing skin…I can’t help it, it is something I have never had. Now, I have learned that my skin is very delicate, VERY dry but moisturizers too aggressive aren’t for me either. In fact, I need to be very specific with products I use and I have finally found a routine that suits me except when I have big break outs and need to go and do a facial from a professional beautician.

Anyhow the story isn’t finished yet because, as you can see from the picture above, my back acne has taken control over my back. I had chickenpox when I was 15 and my back was left with various micro scars, now you have to add the back acne. Anyway back at that time, I didn’t want to wear anything that didn’t cover my back and I was scared of summertime. At 15 I was avoiding to go to the beach or the swimming pool and I kept refusing to go for years.

Still now I don’t feel much more confident. I am ashamed of my skin, I feel embarrassed, I don’t like it. Anyhow, I am working really hard to try to make it healthier again by using a delicate oil everyday, which says results will be seen in 3 months time. In the meantime I am really working a lot with ‘not caring about what others think‘ (another BIG issue of mine) and carelessly going to the swimming pool. Thus, it is obvious why I envy other people’s skin.

And now it is time to talk about my body and still how I feel awkward about showing it.

My Body

My greatest problem of all is that I look skinny on top but I have wide thighs and a wide bum. All my friends instead have very skinny legs and I have always felt excluded. I don’t want to mention the terrible hours of ballet classes during my teens. I avoided going to the beach as much as I could because I hated showing my body.

Well, I still feel this but I am also embracing it. There are many things I can do and that I am doing like:

exercising. It is good for the body&health, for your attitude and now I don’t want to lose weigh and have different legs, I just want them to be toned and fitted.
going to the swimming pool. I am going to aqua aerobics classes and I love it plus swimsuits flatter a more round body.
showing it. Knowing a little bit more fashion styles has helped me disguise my body shape. I love high waisted jeans because they make you look fitter. At least with my eye.

In conclusion, embracing my body shape, accepting the way my skin will always beand taking care of them both has been a long journey. It started by knowing nothing and feeling miserable to accept my ‘weaknesses’ and trying to love me as I am. Now at 25, it has been a tough process. I know I am stronger today than when I was a teen, and I also know that some days I won’t feel this determined and positive but it is okay. C’est la vie.

I just want to say that if you are something like me, very judgy and strict with yourself, try to slow it down and be more understanding. You are the worst enemy of yourself…at least I was for me for a very long time.

Sorry for this loooonggg talk on myself. Hope you can somehow relate and get some positive vibes.