When I'm around someone else, I try to see myself through their eyes, which may or may not be their actual eyes.

I relate to this. It's why I've been so self-conscious most of my life. I tend to base how I feel about people on how they seem to perceive me.

Even now, I'm still aware of how I'm being perceived, but it's usually in the periphery, like the way I'm aware of someone standing next to me while I'm looking straight ahead.

They can tell me over and over that they think I'm beautiful, for example, and I won't believe it for a second.

You don't need to believe what they say is true, but maybe you can accept that they believe what they're saying. Everyone has a different idea of beauty, and it's really difficult to get an impartial reading of oneself.

Furthermore, there is beauty in literally everything. It's just a matter of seeing it. If you find it easy to see beauty in others but difficult in yourself, maybe try exploring the idea that you are not really separate from the world, but rather inseparable from it. That itself is beautiful in many ways.

It took me this long to love myself, so how could this person possibly do it? Not only did it take a long time, but they don't have to, I do. I'm stuck being me. And i don't want to be me for them.

Love is not bounded by time or reason. It's unique in that it simply is. When someone shows you love, you recognize it because you have it inside as well. The desire to deserve the love you're offered is itself a kind of expression of love.

I am only good enough when I am alone.

I think this is the great challenge of life! Alone, I can master anything given the time and resources. But interacting with other people is an ever-changing puzzle. Bringing the peace I've found alone into the "real world," where other people I don't control do all kinds of things I can't ignore, has proven itself a challenge that gets easier with mindful practice. When I'm in a higher state of mind, I see each person as an infinite being playing human. When I notice that I'm not in that mindset, it gets easier to remind myself.

Everyone I love I believe deserves a lot better than I have to offer, whether it be my looks or love or skill, I can't see them being content with it, and I wouldn't want them to be. This is where I lose myself.

The idea that your loved ones deserve better than what you can offer is, I think, very close to the essence of love. Love is infinite, but our corporeal selves are finite. The best thing you can do with love is receive it, even if you feel you don't deserve it. This is how love propagates.

I don't want to be me anymore, I want to be what they do deserve. This means going through drastically lengths to become that person, and feeling really guilty and depressed if I can't. I've had to pretend to not have anxiety, starve myself, study subjects I don't understand, do sexual things I'm uncomfortable with, love someone even though I didn't. I am a contortionist, unable to stand on my own two feet.

I recently heard this and this for the first time, and they seem rather relevant =]