To the girl who doesn't feel beautiful:

They will tell you that you cannot truly love another person until you love yourself. It is absolute bullshit, and you should not listen to them.

My god, what has the world done to you? You were a bright promise, holding flowers between your teeth without crushing them and brimming with trust that the world was kind and gentle. The world, you found out, was cruel and bitter. They ripped your confidence away from you with ideals of beauty that you never lived up to. Familiar faces told you that you would be beautiful if you were just a bit thinner, an inch taller, or a few shades lighter. You walked by windows and turned your head the other way, unable to look at your profile without scrutinizing every nuance of your appearance. You cried at night about things you could not change about yourself-- impossible, outlandish things.

You love others with an intensity they will never understand without ever learning to love yourself. It's easier to focus your attention elsewhere. You see beauty in the most abstract of things. You see beauty in strangers, abstract concepts, and trailblazing ideas. You see beauty in dewy morning air, fresh linens straight from the clothesline, and the confidence that was stolen from you. You love those who are good to you with such loyalty and ferocity because you have never been allowed to direct that supreme devotion and adoration towards yourself.

I understand; I've never thought myself to be beautiful or even just average. I write this a woman who cripples herself with constant scrutiny hidden behind fabricated confidence. I feel your pain, and I know that society telling you to love yourself while bombarding you with images of beauty that aren't diverse kills you a little bit every time it happens (and it happens all the time). You feel sick when you look in the mirror for too long; I do too. You would give anything to wake up in a new body; I do too.

There is someone in this world, at least one but likely an army, who thinks you are beautiful. There is someone who loves your body when you are ashamed of it. They adore the gap in your front teeth. They will never think that your skin is too dark or blemished. They see beauty in your natural hair, and they worship at the feet of your bones. They revere every inch of cellulite and stretch marks, and they love your fat body. The way your gums show when you smile or the asymmetry of your face makes them feel whole. They love these things about you because beauty is beyond the skin. Your body is the shell you're inside of, and they revere the only piece of you they can touch.

To the girl who doesn't feel beautiful, the size of your heart puts Jupiter to shame. There's so much of YOU inside your skin that I'm surprised you haven't come undone at the seams. Spare just one drop in the vast cosmic ocean of your heart for yourself. If it hurts too much to try to love yourself right now, we will do it for you until the ache subsides and you're ready.

From one girl who never saw the beauty in herself to another, I know you are beautiful.