wouldn't it be nice

Now, I don't think I'm ugly, but I often wish I was more attractive, so people would be more interested in me, and so I'd feel more confident about talking to strangers. (Or maybe it'd be more realistic to wish that I was more self-assured about myself as a person, regardless of how I looked.)

I have a fear of good-looking people, because I can never really imagine that they'd want to talk to me. This likely stems from teasing when I was younger--nerd, dork, some humiliating incidents that I haven't told many people about but affected me deeply--that sort of crippled my self-esteem. When it comes right down to it, I have never seen myself as that great of a person on my own, which is probably why I depend so much on loving, supportive friends, and why it's incredibly difficult for me to feel confident in friendships with people who are not (outwardly) very loving and/or supportive. I draw strength and confidence (and sometimes my personality) from others, because I am weak, lack confidence, and fundamentally don't like who I am. I have been like this for so long that it's hard for me to imagine that I could change. How do you work on liking yourself more? How do you work on confidence? How do you work on constantly comparing yourself (often unfavorably) to the people around you? How do you work on these things, when you've been like this for 15 years? How do you fight the urge to make yourself an island, to isolate yourself, to feel like you're always going to be alone?

These feelings aren't there all the time, but they tend to arise if I feel even the least bit lonely. Maybe the answer is just to keep myself busy, surround myself with people, so that I don't give the feelings a chance to emerge; but wouldn't it be nice if I could just love myself, value myself, and not constantly be questioning who I am and what I'm doing?