Self-acceptance can be a motherf*****. No really, it is. It seems like we spend so much time in our lives attempting to be OK with ourselves.
For me, learning how to be OK with who I am seems like an ever-lasting battle.
Being a black gay guy from South LA, I definitely fought to find my fit. (Hell I still am). On the one hand, I was raised in an environment that was feminine in nature. By that I mean I was surrounded by a lot of estrogen courtesy of my amazing grandmother and lovely sister. They, along with my grandfather, was were I soaked up a vast majority of how I should act in the world.
On the other hand, I was thrust into a world full of energetic, crass, unapologetic kids, who judged not on the content of your heart, but by how well you could catch a football (which I was and still am, horrible at by the way).
So you take these two worlds, add a kid who only wants to be left alone with his Harry Potter books, and you can imagine the adventures that were had.
I can't begin to count the days where I laid in bed mad or confused about my life. Mad at the fact I wasn't like the other boys. Mad that I didn't have a deep voice or that I walked kind of funny. Mad that the big guys on campus would tease me. Mad that I was rarely chosen first by said guys to be on their team during P.E. (middle school was a shit time in my life).
There were so many times were I truly did not feel worthy, in any sense, all because I didn't feel validated by those who I thought I needed validation from.
As I now lay and think about it, I feel sad in a way for the old me. I feel sad because I was looking for validation in all the wrong places. I feel sad because I wasted so many years yearning to feel accepted and included in a world that I thought would give me something in return. Most importantly, though, I feel sad because I didn't realize that I was good just as I was (more or less).
Today, thankfully, things are different.
I won't sit here and say that I am this new person who no longer seeks validation from others, or doesn't want to be in the "in-crowd," because in many ways I do. However, unlike before, I now see the value in myself, and instead seek validation and comfort from those who are OK with who I am in the present.
I understand that I may never be to much this or too little that, and I'm good with that, because I'm good with me, for the most part anyway.