For most of my life I’ve given far too much weight to what the people in my life say about me. Because my own self-image was so uniformly negative, I accepted negative feedback/criticism (which resonated with my internal beliefs) as “truth” much more easily than the positive stuff. But any positive feelings I had about myself necessarily came from external sources, too.

I’ve been aware of this for years, and the psychological roots of it have been uncovered in therapy over the past two years. I didn’t do much to change it, though; I mean, it’s hardly uncommon amongst women in my cohort to be insecure! But I’ve recently found the motivation/desire to change.

For most of 2009, there was someone in my life who, frankly, flattered me incessantly. It was lovely and made me feel pretty and special and important. If I’d taken some kind of self-esteem survey around Thanksgiving, I would’ve topped the charts. I thought I was really feeling good about myself, but I was actually feeling good about this person doting on me. (Again, nothing unusual.) But when that relationship hit a rough patch, I realized that I hadn’t internalized any of those positive messages, and when they weren’t there anymore, I felt like crap.

And that is crap. I am pretty and special and important, and I want to feel that way on my own, without needing to hear it from someone else. I want to make myself happy. So I’m going to reverse-engineer the problem. To counter the negative messages seemingly hard-wired into my brain, I’m going to do what my previously-mentioned friend did: remind myself often and persistently of the good things that everyone in my life values in me. I’m also going to start a happiness journal here on tumblr. I’ll post there whenever something positive and worth remembering happens, and will also record (to reinforce) positive feedback I’ve received.

I’m taking my happiness — myself! — back from all the people who have tried for nearly 30 years to define me, to tell my story without my input, to idealize me or to denigrate me. Positive or negative, what people see when they look at me says more about them than about me, and therefore isn’t a reliable source to build my self-image from. I’m the only one who can really know me, and I’m determined to strip away all the layers of self-hatred and self-doubt. I’m determined to make myself happy.