I have held myself for so long
in this noose of perfection, I don’t know
how to be okay without the security of
the way this blanket feels on my skin.
I missed the boat that teaches the
lesson of feeling good enough in my
own skin to dare call myself beautiful.
Confidence isn’t something I was taught
and I am telling you it’s not easy to learn
how to Love yourself while you are still
swallowing self loathing like a vitamin
you taught yourself to love the taste of.
It doesn’t mean anything to me when
someone says I am beautiful.
That’s what people say right?
They’re only being nice right?
The thing is… I would feel the same
whether anyone ever said it or not.
Because I haven’t learned to believe it.
I never learned how to see it.
I look in the mirror
and see ugly things.
I tell myself ugly things.
And I feel so much less than beautiful.
But I think if I could turn myself
inside out, rip my heart out and take
a long hard look,
it would be beautiful
and I would see it and believe it.
Because it’s my heart that holds
the beauty,
not this bullshit on the outside;
look inside.
-Stephanie Bennett-Henry
Poetry comes from the inside, messages from the heart, its joy and pain, so this must be true: “Because it’s my heart that holds the beauty, “
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Reblogged this on cabbagesandkings524 and commented:
Stephanie Bennett-Henry on beauty and where it lives.
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You are a genius
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