When I was small I couldn't look into the mirror.

For the freckles on my face was something I didn't see on ads yet they were plastered on me.

I didn't enjoy looking at my legs for the hair on them for they were bruised, marks on them from being a child but the lady on TV never had them.

As a young girl I was told I was not good enough. 

Not good enough to have friends. 

Not good enough to be my own self.

These little comments made me own soul itch. It was bothered by the hate I had recived, I couldn't look into my own self because I was not good enough to be my own self.

It was like an artwork that had gone dreary, a scrap on the street that everyone would walk by without one glance, I was the paint on the fingers, the scraps in the trash. 

I moved away and suddenly I was the new girl, but I couldn't be myself anymore.

I told myself "Andrea, you can't let them know who you actually are or else they probably won't like you again". 

I gew older and older and slowly people started accepting me. I wasn't comfortable with my own body, with the cells that kept me living, with the atoms that made me, ME.

One day I stared at myself at the mirror. My freckles were still there. 

I had no bruises on my legs, but a small bug bite from those Pennsylvania summers that kept me itching for someone to pretend to love me.

I believe that's the summer I started to love me. 

The itching stop and suddenly I was no longer the small child who could not look at the mirror. I was an 18 year old girl who knew that this self-loathing was ridiculous.

If I could tell my friends that they were beautiful, that they are special and harmonious and made trees stand taller, why could I not tell myself that?

I started working hard on my own confidence as if I was an artist. 

I was an artist putting a mosaic peice together. 

Piece by piece, it came together, it was particularly ugly at first, I would cut myself and get agitated when the piece did not fit in one location but rather I found a different place to put it.

The artist took 2 and a half years to put her puzzle together. 

She revealed her artwork and suddenly everyone grew abuzz.

What was so different about Andrea?

I was flawless, an artwork, I was puzzles and hard work and I was not meant to be poked at, I was made to be look at with awe. 

I was modern artwork, I was demanded to be felt. 

This artwork is flawless.