Dear girl, did you know I was like you?

This is a letter written to any girl out there who needs it. Holy Spirit guide my thoughts

Dear girl,

I've never met you and I'm probably never gonna meet you but did you know I was like you? Did you know I hated the image in the mirror? Yeah I used to dislike who I was, in fact I didn't even know who I was. People would tell me I was beautiful and I never believed them. Some people would tell me I needed to loose weight because no one was going to love me that way, now I don't know why but those words I did believe, those words I did take to heart. Somehow those lies were the ones that sunk in, it was because I looked in the mirror and pointed out every imperfection possible, nothing about me was good or worthy of liking. When your friends have boyfriends and your crush doesn't even look at you.............well, let's just say it's pretty easy to believe the lies. I didn't have a boy to tell me that I was beautiful and that he loved me and wanted to be with me forever. I looked in the mirror and saw someone who no one could ever like or have feelings for. Why did I do that? As teenage girls why do we like to torture ourselves? I'm sure you do it too, you stare at yourself in the mirror and spend hours trying to make yourself look better because you are not happy with what you see and you need make up to cover up and feel beautiful. Well that was me, I would spend at least and hour getting ready and making sure that my hair looked great, my mascara was perfect, my lips were glossy, eyeshadow was a must! And I was only in 8th grade.....wow, I was still 14 and I was putting make up on. I wanted to impress a boy and impress the world. I was working out because that's what the world required of me. You see I was never going to believe I was beautiful until a boy told me so, until I knew I could be liked and loved. Boy was I jealous of those Victoria's Secret models who could basically pick out a boyfriend from the crowd, and boy was I jealous of my best friends, don't get me wrong, their relationships were adorable but I wanted something like that. It's human nature to feel like that but with me it was unhealthy, it was destroying my self esteem. Don't let it destroy yours.
Now that was only the physical part. Dear girl, did you know I used to hate my inner self too? Oh yeah, I didn't like who I was inside either. My perspective of myself was : "I'm not pretty, I get angry all the time, I'm never strong enough, I always have to pretend, I hate this girl, she is too jealous, too ugly, too envious. No one loves you, not your family, not your friends, not anyone. Why are you even alive?" Yeah not a place to be huh? I attempted suicide because I was done, I was done with myself, this girl that I trusted with my problems and that I laughed with since I was born was the same girl that now I couldn't stand, was the same girl that I wanted to murder, literally murder. Countless tears were shed and countless more were retained.
So I got a boyfriend, yay!!!!........Not really, if a boy tells you he likes you, do you believe him? Because I couldn't believe this boy, I couldn't believe he would and could like me. So in my head I needed to hear the words "you are beautiful" from a boy but when I heard them, I STILL DIDN'T BELIEVE!! WHAT?!?! What was it gonna take for me to get it?! What was it gonna take for me to understand that I was beautiful inside and out even if I couldn't see it? Was it gonna take for YOU to notice your beauty?
Look I don't care how old you are or how much you hate or love yourself but I'm going to tell you something that you need to hear: YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL! STOP BELIEVING WHAT THE WORLD TELLS YOU!!! Beauty is a very personal thing and is subjective, love yourself first if you want the world to love you.
How did I do it? How did I survive? Well, the cool thing is....I didn't. I didn't do anything, God did it all. He showed me that I was beautiful, that I was his princess, his bride. Everytime I held that knife to take my life and couldn't do it, well it made me feel like a bigger coward than before, but I wasn't ready to die, there is something in this life that I have to do, my story was not ready to end yet. I wanted a boy to tell me I was gorgeous and God did more than that, Christ did more than that. He showed me that his love was immense! Not only did he think I was beautiful, oh no, he loved me even with all my imperfections. He made me with all these imperfections and those make me so unique! GOD LOVES YOU! I don't care if you believe in him or not (and I pray that you do) but the truth is the HE LOVES YOU! Your life may not be easy but he's there!!!! I had to learn to love myself. Dear girl I know how it feels, to not have God, to not have hope, to hate what you see but I understand where you and I went wrong, we listened to every word we heard, to every image we saw. The media shows us stunning girls who are size 0 and we envy them, imagine if everyone was a size 0, do we become beautiful or do we become clones? We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. We cannot be clones.
Dear girl STOP IT! Stop the pain, love yourself, learn how to do it. I want you to know I love you and that there is good in you, of course there's good in you. You are a princess and your husband will love you no matter how you look or feel about yourself because that is real love. If you think that only because a guy likes you that makes you beautiful then I'm sorry to tell you that you are wrong. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Dear girl, what is beauty??
Finally, know this: Loving myself did not come easily, it's not a facile task to love something that you once despised. But by the grace of God I did it, I stopped believing what the world was telling me and the world is going to tell you that God is not real. Think of all the lies it has told you before, will you trust it again? You are worth so much!!! Even the most valuable diamond in this world is not more beautiful than you are because you have a chance to know God, because even in all the struggles that you've faced you still survived.
I love you so much and I hope you can love yourself as much as I love you.
Sincerely,
A girl who was once like you