Just in case.

I hate looking at magazines because they always make me feel incompetent; beauty magazines make me feel ugly. Art magazines make me feel like an amateur. I always have the best intentions when looking through them though, and that's what's makes it worse. I want to find out the new trends so I look in a magazine. I want new ideas for painting, so I look in a magazine. They always end extremely horrific though. But that's the ironic part; you have the best intentions, but feel like the rear-end of a donkey once you're done. I think the worst part is, is that people actually give you compliments, as bad as that sounds. "You're very pretty," yet you feel completely average and you blend in with the woodwork. "I could never draw anything that well," yet it is completely one dimensional and unproportional. The hardest onbstacle in any situation is yourself, yet you are a 90-foot brick wall, covered in spikes and lasers. The biggest question though, is why are we so hard on ourselves? Why can't we just love ourselves, accept our flaws, accept our differences, and move on? What makes the pool of self-pity so inviting? What makes the blanket of self-doubt so cozy? Or is it all in our heads? The pool is below freezing and the blanket is really just a towel, and we amplify everything in our minds, "just in case"?