What to do about low self-esteem?

[Lotto]

To start, I have never had a girlfriend in my whole life and I'm 16. I have been told by many people that I'm ugly as well as skin and bones. People have told me that if they saw me in a relationship that they would puke all over themselves. To top all of that off I'm gay and it seems I will never find a guy that would like someone like me. I like guys that are just the opposite of me (muscular) and my friends have told me that no muscular guy would be attracted to someone like me. I am a nice person and I do make good grades, but that doesn't seem to do the trick. I live in a small town where being gay is disgusting and intolerable and I feel like I'm all alone and will never find love. I've had two crushes in the past that have done just that... crushed me. Both boys had a facebook, one didn't even accept my friend request while the other one did, but wouldn't even talk to me! I am just so tired of being single and feeling like an ugly duckling. Is there any place i can go at 16 to meet that special someone?
Also... what do I need to do to feel better about myself? This is really depressing me.

[Laddered Ah]

Come to America. You'll find someone fast.

[PlzDontJudgeMe]

Hey sweetheart, well the 1st thing you need to do is love yourself for who you are and appreciate how you look. I'm sure your not ugly. And peers can be cruel so don't listen to them. Remember there is billions and billions of people in this world and everybody has somebody for them. Rather they be gay,straight, or bi . Short,tall,fat or skinny. Besides your only 16 baby. You should focus on school and try to accomplish your dreams. By doing this you will build success. Success will lead you to better self esteem. Also to boost your esteem. , you can try going shopping for a new look that fits you better. Get a hair cut and spoil yourself. I hope I helped you darling and have a merry Christmas, Xmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa etc...

[Honus]

Your entire post, and many others you have made, is full of descriptions about how people perceive you and why, or why they should see you differently, but nothing really about who you actually are. What you really seem to be asking is, "tell me who to be, and make it something beautiful." But how should I know? Or anyone else on Yahoo? We can't. You know that, but you ask anyway because you're looking for failure. So you can feel like you've tried, but the world just didn't understand you. But it can't understand you. You're too busy manufacturing reasons to feel misunderstood to do anything worth understanding.

The thing that would actually make you happy, and simultaneously solve all your problems with men, is to be amazing. I'll give you some ideas of how to do that, but you probably won't listen, because being amazing is hard, and it's far easier to believe you're already amazing and focus on all the things that keep others from properly seeing that.

1. Stop being 'gay.'
No, I don't mean it like that. That word is used in two ways. Ostensibly it means preferring people of the same sex romantically and sexually. That's straightforward enough. But most of the time people use it as a branding term. To be gay is to be part of the gay group, and everything that goes with that. The sex is incidental. And that's exactly how you were using it. For you, being gay is an excuse to be unhappy, under-appreciated, and alone (and who gave you that idea?). You start your post by saying you've never had a girlfriend. But of course you haven't, you're gay! See? Easy explanation for perceived failure. Much easier than fixing the problem.

I'm not saying you don't actually like guys. I'm saying it's irrelevant to your happiness right now. You're 16 years old. You know how much sex you'd be having right now if you were straight? Exactly the same amount you're having being gay.

It's totally normal to be unsure of who you are at 16, and be searching for an identity. Kids your age try on a number of identities, and embrace them wholeheartedly, only to abandon them when they don't really work. That's part of the process of learning who you are. But being gay you're at a disadvantage. Not because people are mean to gays, but because an entire sub-culture exists to convince you that because you're gay you're at a disadvantage, so you have no reason to abandon parts of your identity that aren't working for you, the way other 16 year olds might, because it can always be chalked off to bias against your gayness. The media and the activists and everyone building this up aren't doing you any favors. Why would they want to? They hate you. They have so much more power if you never know who you are, because then they can tell you who you are, and change it as it suits their needs. You asked if muscular men like skinny guys. Answer: many of them do, as long as you let them define you in a way that helps them define themselves. The same is true of everyone else who wants you to feel weak and powerless. But if that's how you feel, you do not want to be with the man who would want to be with you. Except you really do, because he'll tell you who to be, and you crave that. So much easier.

Can this possibly be right? Are all those people fighting for you and your gayness really trying to hurt you? Maybe. I don't know what each person's individual motivations are. I'm sure many are very sincere. But consider this: one side argues that homosexuality is unnatural and thus inevitably leads to misery. The other side argues that gay people are mistreated by everyone and we all need to be nicer. Those aren't even arguments about the same thing, which is why even though they claim to be on opposing sides, one thing they both have in common is that, as a logical precondition of their being right, you must be miserable. Screw them all. Be attracted to dudes all you want, but don't think of yourself as gay, and certainly don't brand yourself to others as gay until you work out exactly what you are other than gay. Which is what?

2. Become what you could be great at.
You get good grades. That's a start. But what can you actually do that's worthwhile to people? If your mind just caught upon something you think you're already better at than most other people, you're wrong. That's your mind trying to convince you not to change. It works because you got to feel special. "I'm better than other people at X!" And then you get nowhere you haven't been before, and it's all the fault of those homophobic bastards. But you failed because you didn't try, because you didn't have to. The clue was in the "already." You're not "already" better than anyone at anything except in your mind. I know this because you're 16, and 16 year olds suck at everything. It's not your fault; being good at anything worthwhile takes huge amounts of work, and at 16 you haven't yet had the chance to do that work. You just haven't had the time.

You can become great by first figuring one or two great things you can focus on doing, resisting every effort your ego makes to excuse failure (the homophobic bastards, I'm too skinny, my room isn't clean enough to study in...I'll start tomorrow...I'm still smart), and by making sure nothing less worthwhile takes up your time. That will be points 3 and 4. Earlier I told you what kind of man you don't want. Here's the kind of man you so want: the kind who loves you once you know who you are, having become (or actively in the process of becoming) the man you wanted to be. That man didn't tell you who you are in order to define himself. He couldn't if he'd wanted to, and he didn't want to. He's more secure than that. And you'll have the security of knowing you really are the man he loves. But if you take any shortcuts, you'll always have a reason to believe he can't really love you, because he doesn't know the real you. So you'll have to lie. You'll hate yourself.

3. Stop watching porn.
If you're not there yet, you soon will be: You can spend two hours at a time churning through video after video, searching for just the right thing; that thing that tells you who you are, but it's not out there, because you're not out there. Eventually you just go with whatever because, ugh, you can't do this forever. And then you're done and you hate yourself. You should. You just spent two hours hating yourself and now you're all alone and no better than when you started. But whenever you try to do something worthwhile, it's hard. Much easier to just surf a bit, touch yourself, and feel awful. And so on. You love it, and you're good at it. It's the thing you get the most practice doing, aside from feeling sorry for yourself. So you're not actually going to quit. You can't. Which is fine. You can do the next best thing, which is...

4. Keep it to 15 minutes.
Not just porn. Hours on Facebook. Scrolling through hundreds of profiles on dating sites. It's all just a way of wallowing in your inability to get what you want and blaming your unhappiness on that. It's building an empty monument to your own self-loathing. It's all just mental masturbation. Even physical masturbation is mental masturbation. But the worst part is that it takes so long. So put limits on it. Rather than spend hours mentally masturbating, just masturbate and get it over with. It works like this: whenever you find yourself surfing Facebook, dating sites, or your yearbook or anything really without any direction, recognize that you're using those things as porn. But actual porn is faster, saves you tons of time. So tell yourself, "Self, I'm going to find myself some pictures of sexy gay dudes doing unseemly things, doesn't matter what, who, or where, and get myself off with all celerity, just to be done with it in 15 minutes, and then I'm going to immediately move on to X." Where 'X' is something specific and worthwhile having to do with the pursuit of Point 2, above. The idea is to just be done with it. Does that take the fun out of it? You bet, that's one of the benefits. Eventually you'll find yourself not wanting to bother with the porn and masturbation, and wanting to just skip to the 'X.' Fine, do that. Or not. But the main thing is, don't linger between the two. The moment you find yourself mentally masturbating, or thinking about doing it, then decide whether or not you're actually going to do it and then get it done or move on.

You don't need self-esteem, you need Self. You don't have that right now. It'll take work to get it. Life's slipping away, so you'd better get started.