Think I’ve finally come to the realization that I’ve been way too goddamn hard on myself

So I won’t get too much into my upbringing but to make a long story short, I had a pretty shitty childhood. As I’m sure many people had.

No father, abusive single mother, bullied in school especially for my looks. Shit fucked me up even into adulthood. Carried all that venom in me and let it fuck with my self esteem, didn’t help that even as recent as a few years ago (like 2022) I was still getting shitty comments on my appearance. What else can you believe when you move from one place to another, grow up and meet new people and you still get the same opinions of you. How do you not start internalizing that shit? Obviously this didn’t help with my dating life or lack there of.

Fast forward and idk what happened but starting summer of last year suddenly I started getting compliments of my looks suddenly, even before I started getting my body right and losing some weight (for context I’ve only really been big from 2021 to mid-2024, I’ve gotten negative comments about my appearance for years even before that for various reasons). One girl at my job started flirting with me, one of my other workers who was gay called me handsome, and this really motivated me to continue my weight loss journey.

Since then (especially at my current job) I’ve gotten compliments on my body, being told on 3 occasions I have beautiful skin, girls calling me cute etc. Even ended up making out with a coworker of mine that I had the biggest crush on. I don’t say all this to be conceited even though I know it probably reads like that, but coming from a background where all I ever got was negative comments on myself this change blew my fucking mind. Never thought I’d ever hear the compliments I’ve been getting in my lifetime. I’ve even got coworkers asking me my workout routine, shit feels good.

It also got me thinking how much I let other people’s opinions effect me this whole time. I guess you could still make this argument even now just on the more positive side now but I’m seeing now that beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, and looking back now even in childhood I’ve had occasions where girls called me cute, I just let all the negative people talking shit about ke effect my mind and overshadow the positive.

Anyways this shit is getting too long now. Just thought I’d make a positive post for once instead of moping all the damn time.