He Made It Worse

I recently had someone ask me if I suffered from low self esteem in which I replied yes. He began to tell me how I shouldn't because I am a very attractive man. He then made comments about how I should stop telling myself that I'm ugly and I should not feel bad about having kinky hair or dark skin.

Well, I appreciate his concern but he came off totally wrong. If we were the same race and he had kinky hair and dark skin then maybe I would have felt where he was coming from but that wasn't the case. I never once said that my low self esteem was directly related to my looks. Of course I have faced prejudice based on my hair and skin color in my life but honestly I have always taken pride in what I look like. For him to assume that I think I'm ugly or I hate my hair and skin was ignorance on his part. It kind of felt like he was projecting his own feelings about how I look onto me and it made me cringed because he thought he was helping me but he was actually making things worse.

I admit I have suffered with low self esteem for years. I can also admit that sometimes I haven't been totally happy about the way I looked but it was never related to me wanting to have a different texture hair or skin color. Most of my self esteem issues stem from the way I have been treated in life not the way I look. Thanks for nothing.