Quarantine was a trying time for everyone; being away from family and friends, online class, cabin fever, and limited access to necessities… Not great. I, like many, was not learning very well via online classes, and my mental health was getting worse every day. I began skipping classes, stopped reaching out to friends and eventually hit rock bottom. But because of this, my mental health is now stronger than it’s been in years, if not my entire life. Here are the lessons I learned.Lesson One – History ≠ Friend
Quarantine exposed some of my friends’ true colors. I’ve dropped a few friends since this past March and learned my first lesson; History with someone doesn’t equal a good friend. I realized I had been ignoring toxic traits in my best friend and denying that we were no longer as good of friends as we had once been. I had convinced myself that because he knew more about me than anyone else and we had been best friends for years, we were still best friends. But they did something and I snapped out of my denial. Although it’s a hard pill to swallow, friendships end when people change in incompatible ways. Once I dropped a few people, I felt better. Here are some things I realized my friends had been doing that was worsening my mental health:
Jokes at my expense
Refusal to have (necessary) serious conversations
Talking behind my back
Blaming everything on me
Flakey
Not being there for me when I needed support
Do with this information what you will.
Lesson Two – You’ll Never Look Like Those Influencers Because Neither Do They
They say “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” My subconscious must’ve had this in mind when it decided to make self-hatred a constant companion for me. Always whispering in my ear while looking into the mirror, chatting my ear off while picking outfits, writing little hate notes for me when reviewing my grades. We were definitely too close. I had grown so used to its company over my life that I had assumed it would be one of life’s constants, keeping me company throughout my whole life.
One day, I began getting videos in my suggested feed on YouTube, telling me how to overcome self-hatred. “Here’s why you’ll never look like social media influencers – spoiler alert; they don’t even look like that!” That one video changed most of my mindset. I had always known deep down that they photoshopped themselves, but that video really got it through to me. They use lighting, angles, makeup, poses, and photoshop to their advantage, yet we sit here in our natural and unedited bodies and compare ourselves to fake images.
I went through the 400+ people I followed on Instagram and unfollowed anyone whose images were overly edited, anyone whose content no longer interested me, and anyone whose content made me feel bad about myself. After unfollowing over 100 accounts, my feed was more fun to look through. The content I was consuming was content I actually wanted and liked, and I didn’t feel bad because of it anymore.
Lesson Three – I Have Features I’d Really Like on Someone Else
I was reading one of my favorite comics and thinking about how much I wished my eyes were the same color as one of the characters when I realized how often I think that about different peoples’ eye colors. I realized yet another thing I always knew deep down but ignored, something that you always hear; Everyone is unique. I thought about how every person I compared myself to looked different from each other. Audrey Hepburn looked classically beautiful in a way that no one else ever has nor ever will. Sure, Lily Collins bears a resemblance to her, but she too is beautiful in a different way.
I realized that although people may have specific features that are similar to another’s, it’s the combination of all the different features you have that determines how you look. I could have the same eye color of Emma Stone, yet I still wouldn’t look like her. Dumb as it may be, I had always told myself, “If only I had that person’s eyebrows,” thinking that if I did, I would be as beautiful as her. But after reflecting on everything I’ve ever envied on another person, I realized that Angelina Jolie and Anne Hathaway both have very different eyes, yet I’ve envied both.
It may seem simple and obvious to many of you, but I was a little shocked when I had realized all of that. I began to wonder, “What features do I have that I would be envious of if someone else had them?” I stood in front of the mirror and looked at myself objectively. I put aside that I was looking at myself, deciding instead to look at the mirror as another person. I like my eye color, I like my lip shape, I have odd (in a good way) dimples, and my face honestly wasn’t that bad when I forgot who I was looking at. I realized I didn’t hate my looks- I hated myself and refused to let myself be happy with anything about me. Once I realized how many of my features I actually really like, my lifelong self-hating companion became only an acquaintance I had brief encounters with.
Lesson Four – You Can Like Something and Still Want to Change It
I had always thought that loving yourself would mean you wouldn’t want to change anything about how you look. So when I was looking in the mirror and thinking about how I’d like to lose more weight, I got scared I’d relapsed. But I didn’t have an issue with the weight I was at the moment, I thought it was a nice weight, I just wanted to be a bit thinner.
That’s when I learned my fourth lesson; Wanting to change something doesn’t always mean that you dislike what it currently is. Of course, if you want to change something because you dislike or hate what it currently is then yeah, obviously that’s not always good. But once I figured this out, I was much more lenient when it came to how I thought of myself. Yes, I’d prefer not to have that pimple, but it’s here and it’s not that bad. Once I adopted that mindset on everything, self-hatred became a long-distance friend from my past.
Going in to quarantine my mental health had been bad, during quarantine it was worse than ever, and coming out it’s better than it’s been in years, if not my entire life. All because of a few videos and changing who I talk to. While some of this might not be worded in a way that is useful to everyone, I hope that it helps at least one person. And now that I’m done writing this, I’m going to go enjoy some time with just myself.