What is beauty? Beauty is a characteristic of an animal, idea, object, person or place that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction.  But a girl, Emma, she couldn’t seem to accept her beauty. She’s been struggling with it for years. Though her family members have told her overtime that she is very beautiful and has the body of a model, of course she didn’t believe it, but nobody could understand why. Her self esteem had gotten so low that she started to hurt herself. No one ever noticed the scars that were on her thighs, she kept it very easily hidden because she always wore jeans.

    Until one day, during the hot, steaming summer she was going swimming with her family. Obviously, she isn’t going to wear a regular bathing suit because it would show her marks, so she wore swim shorts and a swimsuit top. She dropped her towel onto the chair and headed straight towards the diving board, as she stepped on top it , her mom yelled out “Do a cannonball!” Emma jumped on the board three times to get enough power to jump, each time she did she went higher and higher. On the last jump she held her legs with her arms and splashed into the water, making a big wave. Her family together said “Woo Hoo!” Emma swam to the other end of the pool, pushing herself out of the water to get out, not knowing her shorts were folded up past her thigh, showing her scars. Her mom noticed but didn’t say anything in the moment. She immediately rolled her shorts back down and jumped back into the water.

     Later on after swimming, Emma went inside and took a hot shower, once she was done and got dressed her mom knocked on her door and said “ Emma, sweetheart, can I come in?” she replied with “Yes.” When her mom walked in, she didn’t bother to face her, she just sat in her window seat looking at the flowing trees. Emma was shaking, she was nervous her mom might say something about her marks. Her mom, Carol, said “ What’s going on Emma, what are those marks from?” They sat in silence for a moment before Emma said anything, she took a deep breath and said “ I hate this feeling of not being beautiful like everyone else. I see females all over instagram who have naturally soft skin, who don’t break out and don’t turn red like I do. I just don’t understand. I hate having to wear makeup all the time, just to cover it all up and yet it still doesn’t even help. Why can’t I be beautiful like everyone else.” “Why would you want to be like everybody else, why not stand out and accept the face that you have, it was structured this way because God made it like this. He made you different, looking the same like everybody else means you blend in, do you want to blend in? Be the same as everybody else? Your different emma, accept that, you are beautiful.” “ I don’t know mom, i’m still not convinced. Sure I may be different, but does that mean its in a good way? I’ve never had a boyfriend in my life unlike other girls, s*** i’ve never even had a boy like me.” “ Is it that serious that it has to come to this? I mean your not allowed to have a boyfriend anyways. I’m gonna take you to see a therapist tomorrow, because you won’t listen to me and this cutting thing isn’t acceptable.”

      Emma rolled her eyes, thinking to herself that seeing a therapist is dumb, if her mom can’t help her with it, then what makes her think a stranger can help me? She went anyways, for her mom, because that’s what she wanted. Carol signed her in on the chart as Emma walked over and sat on a chair, within five minutes a therapist named Ms. Brown opened the door and called “Emma?” Carol and Emma got up and walked over to the therapist and both said “Hi.” Emma asked her mom not to be with her during the session and her mom agreed to it and waited in the waiting room. They sat down in Ms.Brown’s office, Emma could smell the lemon twist candle sitting on her desk.

    As Ms.Brown sat down in her chair, she asked “So, what brings you here today?” “ Well my mom wanted me to come, but she brought me here because for the past 6 years i’ve been having very low self esteem issues, like very very low and I know i’m not special, there are plenty of other girls who are going through the same thing.. Mine just got a lot worse, I started cutting myself, it started about a year ago and nobody ever knew about it until yesterday when my mom saw them. I just hate feeling this way, I want to be comfortable in the body i’m in...not be ashamed.” “Ahh.. yes, I went through the same thing as well when I was about your age, of course it never comes easy, I didn’t hurt myself, but I fell into a deep depression, my mom made me see a therapist as well and it turned everything around for me, I learned to accept myself, to be confident in who I was because God made me this way for a reason, he wanted me to be different than others…” And of course it went on and on.

     Eventually, Emma came to a realization that the most important kind of love, is self love. Nobody could determine how she looks or how she feels because that is all up to her. The first step to happiness was to accept who you are as a person and that’s exactly what she did. There’s only one her in the world and she thought that was pretty special, so why let herself go to waste, you only live one life, don’t let other people tell you how to live it and how you should look or act of it. Live your life up to your standards... so she did it.