This is one of the hardest issues I would ever address about myself and the truth is I do not know how to start but I will write about this from any instance I recollect.
I was a very skinny child while growing, Mom said I never liked to eat, so for years I was the child in the house who they had to force to eat food. My childhood friends told me I used to cry a lot when I was called skinny probably because it gave me a small demeanour, I would tease my sister calling her fatty bum bum...I never discovered if I hurt her or not. And would never know until I myself started to gain weight. I had not realised how much weight I had put on until I got to Primary 5 or there about. It was the holiday my mother said in irritation "Do you know how many pounds are in your arm" I had asked her earlier for food after just eating shortly. I don't hold this against her neither do I give her the title of "ohh my mom caused my depression" but it was that day I really begun to look at myself for long moments in the mirror. I took no steps to change my eating habits or any thing of that sort I would request for every junk food I knew and Dad would provide for me. I was mostly only with my parents or my aunt and while they were away I grew very lonely.. So I experimented with everything that looked like food in the house.
When I was finally called fat in primary 5, in express terms, I didn't know what to do to get rid of it. I prayed to God to forgive me for calling my sister Fat all those years. I began to think that I was being punished for what I had done.

Secondary school was the advent of what I like to call self denial. I hated pictures. I hated social nights or activities. I hated dances. I hated myself. I was a teenager with no boyfriend and I sucked. I hated my status. So I found solitude in only one thing "singing", I wrote songs about having nobody and how I needed to be loved. I wrote poems full of hate and rage. I wrote dark stories and lots of fantasy. I read books to avoid people, I practically lived in the pages of those books. Sometimes I would dream about being someone else, someone popular for beauty and not just for singing. Some nights in boarding school I would stay under my covers and cry till I slept off and no one would know.
Senior school, I began to look at myself a little more differently, yes I was good in my academics literature and all, so I kind of accepted myself for being smart. I started writing again but I was falling fast into depression. I wanted to be the definition of perfect to lose all the weight and be skinny, so I started starving myself and when I couldn't keep up I would start eating again and gain all the weight back. It was this stage of my life that I got close to a few friends that helped me through senior school. Good roommates too that made me laugh when I wasn't crying. It was during that period I started talking to God at my hostel backyard with my guitar on my lap.

Senior school people called me beautiful but I could not understand that word. I was not beautiful.

Age 17, I started taking pictures more, but selfies only. Age 18, I started starving more often than normal. I would go on water diets for days. Weakness would take over my body like no man's business. This was my life I was in control of it I told myself. My parents became worried and I would tell them I was fine. My relationship with God was unstable and I was finding comfort in my weight loss and of course YouTube videos of people who "water fasted".
Age 18, my body crashed. The doctor took long hours of talking to me telling me I was not at all the way I saw myself, examining me she touched my stomach and I winced, she diagnosed me as someone developing ulcer and if I did not discontinue the stomach ulcer would expand. So I quit it

I avoided gyms and became self conscious of every one who looked at me. I would often starve until I had this sharp pain in my stomach. I was miserable. I desperately tried to accept myself but I just couldn't. I couldn't appreciate that I was beautiful the way I was. I felt alone and empty I knew I had to trace my way back to God I knew I had to somehow forgive myself and move on. Over the years I put myself on diets.. Avoided public places, etc.( I still do though). But one day I looked at myself I puffed out the word beautiful, I called out all the parts of my body and told them I loved them. I felt relieved. Of all my years of self denial, I have never felt as relieved as I did at that moment. I decided to drop it off, all my worries, all the "have I added" questions that frustrate my family and friends (yeah I'm trying not to ask at all), I decided to eat when I'm hungry, although I'm still trying to attain a life without eating animals but that's not for weight loss or anything. I have decided to stop trying. I told God to take charge of my life, told him I was tired and I wasn't going to do this anymore, that is worry about how I look.

Sometimes thoughts come back, I feel weird, I feel like a big lump of flesh. Silly right? Trust me if I did not have God, I would be the most depressed human being on the face of planet earth. I would be sinking in and out of moods.
I'm 19 and I feel tremendously different yes sometimes I struggle but from the time I was 17 to this time of my life, I've never felt more at peace with God and myself, never felt more purposeful. I consider myself very blessed by God with the family he gave me ( my brothers are annoying though lol), with the friends he blessed me with and with the realisation that I am royalty. Don't get it twisted, I never said it would not be hard to learn to accept yourself. You might probably go years with learning to accept yourself but it's much easier when you do so with God.

So after this long epistle I have just written, Here are some tips that have helped me;
- Constantly talk to God especially when these moods hit you
- look for clothes that express your sense of style and just be you
- do what you enjoy doing could be poetry, singing, dancing, etc.
- look at yourself in mirror and smile like an idiot lol
- laugh often
- Love people, every single person you meet
- Talk about your moods to someone you know will listen
- Have older friends and people who speak wisely
- Read read read and read good books, I personally love novels. I'm a big fan of Ted Dekker. I see life differently through books. Grab a book and read.
- review a book or a movie with a friend, it takes your mind off things
- find someone who makes you feel better about yourself and be in their company. Negative energy sucks, cut it off
- listen to Good music that doesn't place you in the midst of stereotypes
- try not to idolise people, you'll look at yourself as completely flawed
- lastly live your life for purpose and not to have fun or to be accepted by the society