YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

As a young child, I grew up feeling very uncomfortable in my skin. Not because I felt I was not beautiful and not because I wished i looked like someone else but this was simply because I was called ‘BLACK’.

Now imagine being called black by your own race and family. Imagine that young innocent tender heart being laughed at because she was created and sculptured with a darker sand. This destroyed my self esteem. I hated myself and worse, hated pictures and would always hide behind for all group photographs. I never wanted to be seen. I mean who enjoys being laughed at.

More to it was the eyes. It was referred to as ‘BULGY EYES’. I was not sure if I wanted my eyes anymore. I would rather be alone and write to myself, telling myself how beautiful I looked and how others could not see clearly. It eventually happened that I needed to see an optician and lens were prescribed. Hoping this would change things, it only succeeded in earning me another name; this time, it was ‘Harry Potter’. Lol.

This was my childhood and I had completely lost my self esteem. I remember severally i told God to recreate me or change one part of my body or the other. Daily, this was my prayer but it never happened. I knew God loved me so much and everything he created was so perfect and so i had to be perfect too right? But it did not feel so.

So this was what I decided to do. I walked up to every surface that gave a reflection of my dark skin and bulgy eyes and stared at my reflection for a while and said out loud to myself, ‘YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL’.
As silly as it may sound, this helped me a lot. It gave me more courage and made me feel much more comfortable in my dark skin. As I grew, I realised how radiant it turned out to be and how the bulgy eyes became a thing of beauty everyone admired.

Of course it had to start from me. It always begins from you. The moment you quit spending more time hating that part of your body because everyone laughs at it or simply because you wish you had something better, it gets much better. Rather than hating your beautiful hands or legs or nose or even face, why not treat it like gold. Adore it, find out ways to make it much more beautiful and watch that in no distant time, it would be praised. It works like magic.

My kid sister once told me, ‘why even try to become light skinned?, why try to change your dark skin? Do you not realise how beautiful you are? People with ligher skin suffer because they look for means to get rid of all kinds of spots and apply products to make them fade; but your dark skin hides it all. It’s never seen.’
What we don’t realise is that people would always have things to say. People would still hate you and some would love you regardless. So stop worrying and be yourself.

Love yourself, love your skin, love who you’ve been made to be; and live each day loving you.

_Nicole Obiajunwa