Selfies and Self-Esteem

For the past couple of months, I have been doing a lot of work trying to find what it is that I like about myself.  How do I make myself proud?  What accomplishments can I feel good about?  What is it that makes me love me?  Being the well-trained pessimist that I am, the answers to those questions are usually a quick and fast “I don’t”, “none”, and “nothing”.  I mentally go through everything I have not done and compare myself to other women that I know who have careers and money.  Why am I so hard on myself?  Well, for starters, society frowns on women like myself.  I didn’t graduate college.  I got married at nineteen and immediately got pregnant.  I had a few jobs here and there but wound up on disability due to my chronic migraines and debilitating depression and anxiety.  I have no career, no skills, and no foundation to stand upon.  What are the positives?  I am still married to the same man I met as a teenager.  We will be married eighteen years next month.  And I have three wonderful, well-mannered and respectable children.  That’s all I can come up with. I have spent my entire adult life as a wife and mother and have progressed in little to nothing else.  When I feel down and insecure about my place in this life I desperately try to find something good and uplifting. 

I struggle immensely with every aspect of my being.  One thing that can sometimes make me feel good about myself is when I take a good selfie.  Since I spend a lot of time being inactive due to chronic pain or depression I rarely feel good about myself or how I look.  A really nice picture of myself reminds me that I am not as ugly and fat and useless as I think I am.  It may sound dumb and vain to most people, but when I am unable to feel good about myself I look through the selfies on my phone to feel better.  In all brutal honesty, I live with a ton of self-hatred, guilt, low self-esteem and lack of confidence.  I don’t have much going on in my daily life that gives me a sense of purpose, achievement or productivity.  I don't have much of a social life either.  So, on the few occasions where I go out and my hair is decent and I have on a little makeup I take a snapshot to record a moment in time where I felt good about myself. It’s more than just looking good.  For whatever reason on that day, I was satisfied with who I am.  I was happy.  That is something that I need to remember and taking a picture memorializes that feeling for me.  I can look back at those photos and recall how I felt that day.  Most days I’m very sad and overcome with stress. Flipping through my photo album in my phone helps to lift me out of the depression, even if just for a few minutes.  I want to feel the way I look in those photos all of the time instead of unhappy and displeased with life.  One day that will hopefully be the case as I continue to work on myself, but until I get there these pictures will have to do.