This I Believe Essay: The Journey of Self-Acceptance
I believe in self-acceptance and that self-acceptance lights the path to happiness and inner peace. When I mean happiness, I do not mean the pleasure you get from opening Christmas gifts, the excitement you get while partying or the feeling of luck you get when winning the lottery. Happiness is accepting and believing in something only you have full control of: your soul. Some people can find self-acceptance on their own. But most people, like myself, need others to guide them on their journey to self-acceptance and happiness.
During my senior year of high school, I was down in the dumps. Not only did my ‘first love’ dump me with no intention of coming back, but my ‘friends’ of high school treated me as if I did not exist. I felt anguish, confusion, humiliation, and alienation. I depended on their praise and company to be proud of myself. In reality, however, all I was doing was deferring my attention from accepting the only thing that can grant me true happiness: me. I would feel great when people would say, “You look really pretty!” or “You are so amazing!” I would smile and say thanks even though I wished I could just disappear. I was ashamed and afraid of myself. The face I wore with a smile was nothing but a suffocating mask. I became addicted to the artificial feelings I received with other people. The feelings I felt with people were not feelings of happiness. They provided a temporary high. But when I stopped receiving them, I crashed. But as I crashed, I was rebuilt again.
In my sorrow and withdrawal, I found my three angels that helped me find happiness within: Amanda, Lucia, and Sally. They did not say things like “I wish I could be like you!” nor did they say “The clothes you wear look really good on you!” They said things that melted away that mask of mine. They told me: “There are also people that will listen to your problems and still accept and love you for who you are. Those—we are your friends, not them. The fact that you regret your mistakes shows that you have a heart. You are a good person.”
They cleared the damp mist of doubt looming over me. That was all I needed.
Thanks to those words, I looked into myself. You do not need the whole world nor a big group of people on your side to feel happy. What you need is a small number of friends that will seal the nothingness you have been feeling all your life so you can fill it on your own. Filling that nothingness is the journey to internal happiness. Self-acceptance is necessary in filling that nothingness and in order to accept yourself, you might need some angels to light the way for you. So after you find your angels and accept their guidance, do not be afraid to be happy…
Aha, that was my This I Believe essay that I had to write for my writing class last semester. I know it isn’t the best essay you have ever read but nonetheless I felt like sharing my belief with the blogosphere anyway. It was a pretty interesting project I had to do and the site has lots of interesting essays so I suggest you go to the website and check it out ;D
What do YOU believe in?
Hi everybody! Yeah that little ‘brief hiatus’ turned into two months! //fail. But I was honestly planning to update with a new layout but I have have been so busy that I have not had the time to make one that I was satisfied with. 
Wow, I haven’t updated in a while! College has started for me…and to my surprise….I like it! (say what?! hehe) And have also been preoccupied by it too. I won’t make any promises, but I’ll try my best to update on a bi-weekly basis and returning comments! aiyo!
18 years old. 09/30/1991. Very annoying, weird, corny, and uncool. Currently a college freshman studying Speech Pathology at 
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