I’m gonna go ahead and out myself on something here:

Don’t get me wrong–dating apps are a special kind of hell, and between modern technology and a global pandemic, dating in this current day and age is, unequivocally, the ghetto (as well as a twisted gamification of human interactions…but that’s a gripe for another day).

However, the part where you pair a compilation of photos with a “bio” blurb and/or answers to random prompt questions like ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ and ‘We’ll get along if…’–this is the part that I take great pleasure in. What many may find tedious, I find fun; it’s simply another outlet for me to showcase snippets of the best parts of myself, be it my witty humor, language skills, or ✨innate ability✨ to connect and bond with nature (see below)! (This is also a plug for my services; seriously, pay me to make your online dating profiles.😂🤗)

You may have read that and thought, ‘Well gosh, someone’s vain’. And you know what–I’ll take that assessment, any day of the week. Because there was a long period of my life when I could have never claimed such confidence–and I live in constant awe and gratitude to have been able to emerge from those dark times and sit on the opposite side of the confidence spectrum.

Self-love, self-confidence, body acceptance–all these terms are zing words that get thrown around a lot these days. But in reality, these are really hard concepts to personally embody, especially when we live in a society that tends to raise arms to our ability to do so. I say this from experience; I used to hate myself. Like, wholy and truly loathe everything about my being. I didn’t think I was pretty enough, skinny enough, funny enough, talented enough, etc. to be deserving of anything more than tolerance, talk less love and affection. On top of that, I felt like a fraud; while I presented as a confident outgoing girl on the outside, my true state on the inside was far from anything along those lines. Living out that contradiction day-in and day-out for friends and classmates and family was draining and only caused me further inner turmoil. So I know all too well that loving yourself doesn’t come easy, and that it takes much more than a one-off mantra to get to that point.

It took me literal years to dig myself out of this mental spiral; and I truly think that I’m one of the lucky ones to have been able to go from being at that very low, dark point, to having almost unconditional and unbounded love for most aspects of who I am as a person. But because I spent so much of my life and so much energy hating myself, I still vividly recall so much about That Etinosa–and the stark contrast to Present Etinosa is a difference that sincerely brings tears to my eyes. Like, for instance, with the dating apps. That Etinosa didn’t think herself worthy of being seen; you’d rarely find her voluntarily having her photo taken, talk less putting said photos of herself out on an app for all to see and critique. And That Etinosa didn’t see any redeeming qualities in herself–so how could she possibly convince others in a character-limited text box that she had ones that made her worthy of an affirmative finger stroke? And don’t even get me started on other aspects pertaining to things like seeking outside validation, rejection, relying on an algorithm to measure one’s self-worth….the list goes on and on. (Needless to say, I’m glad that I was able to have my mental glow-up before I entered the online dating space.)

So for me, my dating app profiles are so much more than a hail-mary attempt to find a suitable companion in the midst of a global pandemic (🤡); they are badges of how far I’ve come, and little app-sized love letters to myself. Yes, they’re superficial, and yes, they mean little-to-nothing in the grand scheme of things. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that when I go back and check out my profile, looking at it as if I was another user instead of through ‘Edit’ mode, I am utterly and sincerely in love with the radiant person that I see reflected in the words and photos–and will forever be in awe that that person is me.

Thanks for reading.