By Apoorva Dixit
The last few years have been
A constant reminder
That sometimes you will accept
Everything and everyone but yourself.
How your thighs look
When you sit comfortably
On a recliner and how your chipped teeth
Show up un-invited in every photograph.
And how sometimes your forehead
Is home to acne and you are too lazy
To make them find new places.
So today I say that I want to love myself,
And I want to do it in a way that
Somebody’s existence isn’t a threat to my own,
Which means that my cliche thoughts
And fidgety mind need space to exist.
Where the prettier girl down the lane
Doesn’t remind me of my flaws.
I want to do it in a way that I want to forget
When granny told me that a fair complexion
Is the beauty standard and I may need to
Get change my skin colour to find a perfect match.
I want to love myself in a way that
I never hesitate to look at my body in the mirror
And get reminded of the women
On the magazine cover pages.
I want to love myself because
My biggest victory isn’t the perfect body,
The complexion or the scholarship I got,
Neither the shields mom preserved nor the
A+ grade I have been scoring all my life,
Rather my biggest conquest is getting up
From the bed the day I didn’t want to.
But I can’t put that on my resume.
I want to love myself because
I have come a long way
And dedicated enough to go more.
I want to love myself in a way
That the next time somebody asks me
“Tell me about yourself”
I don’t tell them that I am someone with a ninety-five in tenth
And an engineer by chance,
Rather I tell that I am made
From millions of failures and thousands of heartbreaks.
I want to love myself in a way that
Every breath is a constant reminder
“I am grateful for your existence”.
I want to love my myself John Legend style
Where my heart sings,
“All of me, loves all of you”.
