When you care what others think of you, they own you

How have I changed so far? Well, having already been firmly planted in an out of the ordinary kind of lifestyle, I had a little less to shed than most. I've always been a non-make up kinda girl and I never cared about my hair so it was allowed to grow out and get cut about once a year. Pretty much whenever I noticed the kids needing a haircut I would think, "oh yeah, it has been a while for me hasn't it". It's not often that I find a guy with a smaller wardrobe than me, yes even Paul's clothes take up more room in the closet, but that's mostly because my mom keeps buying him dragon Tshirts as a surprise. And I've always said that I wouldn't want to own a ring or a car that someone would want to steal from me. For what? To show off? To make a spectacle of myself but then have to live in fear of attack by others who feel they need what I have? I just don't get it.
But I digress, even though I didn't fall into the trap of bling and such, I did become a person with low self-esteem and that in turn allowed me to take on other things. Not very good things like smoking cigarettes since the age of 13 and drinking almost a twelve pack of Mt Dew a day since about 18 yrs old. For some reason I've always hated water. I'm like that little girl in the movie Signs where she uses every excuse to avoid drinking it, I must agree, if it's been sitting for a little while, it could get dusty! I know it's not healthy for me to pump myself full of Dew all day but I've become almost addicted to it through the years and now it's difficult to imagine letting it go.
But if what I'm doing is working on evolving and I believe what I said earlier, then my observation is that these things do not benefit me and now I must do something to change it. This is where going within is helpful because I first must figure out what makes it so important for me to have it. Was it the low self-esteem? What is that exactly? Does it stem from my ego? What kind of ego do I have when I don't care about the monetary things or fitting in with others and such?