Ask Alee

Q: I’m 14 and I feel really insecure about everything about myself. My social life, lack of a romantic one, my appearance, etc. Just everything. And I don’t know what to do about it or who to talk to. I don’t really feel like I can because boys aren’t supposed to deal with that. It’s seen as girl stuff. So I can’t talk to my friends about it. They would tease me. I tried a few weeks ago when it was really bad and I was just laughed at. To brush it off, I told them I was joking. Please help me. What should I do? 

I’m so sorry you’re experiencing this, and I understand what you’re going through. Society and the way standards are today makes us feel like we’re not good enough, or certain features about us are not “loveable”, and that’s not true. 

One thing that made me feel more confident, is putting myself in situations where I normally wouldn’t. If you want to make friends with someone or you like someone’s outfit and want to compliment them, go for it. If you really want to do something, just do it, overthinking it would just make you feel so much worse if you don’t end up doing it.  I’m not saying there’s no chance you’ll be rejected or feel embarrassed, but we sometimes tend to criticize things we do more than others normally would. So, after a while, the person probably would not even be thinking about it anymore, other things would have come up and they would have just moved on from it and not even remember it.

Now, about your appearance, I can guarantee you that you should not worry about that. As long as you look confident about what you’re wearing or how you look, people really won’t care. Try wearing things you feel comfortable in and overtime you’ll become used to it. Also, tell yourself nice things, specifically when you look in the mirror. You may think this won’t work, but the more you hear it, the more you’ll think about it, and believe it then you’ll automatically assume you look good before you even look in the mirror. 

Onto the problem about people judging you, have you ever looked at someone and started judging every little thing about them? If yes, then you need to understand that you can’t change a lot of things and you just have to deal with them, especially when they have to do with someone else. It’s not something that affects you. Honestly, if you judge every little thing about someone, that may be why you’re insecure, you’re assuming everyone else is doing it to you, too. If you do not, then I can guarantee you that the majority of the people you meet or see everyday are not criticizing you and not even thinking about you or that embarrassing thing you did last Tuesday. I saw this quote, I can’t remember where I got it (credit to them though), but it was basically saying your life isn’t yours if you base every little thing you do on how other people feel about it or you. Try to remember that everytime you feel like changing something you have no issue with, just because of other people.

Now, your friends and how you feel about your relationship status; I understand feeling mocked when trying to talk about something you’re dealing with and people not understanding, but I think you should tell your friends about how you really feel and how you did not appreciate what they did. Now, having this conversation can either create a strong relationship between you and your friend group, or make it worse. In the case it makes it worse, you should know they were just not your people. True friends would never want to purposely hurt you or make you feel bad about something like that. 

Everything happens for a reason, you may be single because you still have things to figure out before you’re in the right position to be in a relationship, you may need to be focusing on other things right now, or it’s just not time for you to be in a relationship. You’re still young and have more to life than focusing on relationships. I am sure you would prefer to wait and be with the right person, than to jump into a relationship with someone random and end up scarred.