Learning to play a new instrument by yourself?

I love music. Seriously. I couldn't live without it. My brother plays many instruments but first of all, he learnt to play the guitar at a young age. I was soooo jealous. I watched him as he played and sang - we have terrible voices but also have the passion to sing. I wanted to play the guitar, too. I wanted to close my eyes and sing and I wanted to write songs- and be Taylor Swift ( don't we all want that? ) However, I did not know how to begin and my brother tried to teach me but it just did not work.
One day while listening to a Kina Grannis song called "Valentine" I desperately wanted to learn it to play to my boyfriend- cliché, I know. It did not work and he looked at me like I was crazy. I probably was but in that moment I decided: one day I will play the guitar.
In that year Pink came out with the song "f*cking perfect". I was totally obsessed with it. Then one afternoon I sat down in front of my laptop and typed "f*cking perfect guitar chords" into the Google search bar. I could not understand a single thing. How do I play a G chord? or a D? or an F? what are these lines with numbers written on them? I googled the name of the chords and typed "f*ucking perfect guitar lesson/tutorial" into youtube, grabbed a paper and pen and started writing and drawing whatever I saw.

  (It took me AGES to find the original paper but I found it!!!!!)

I learnt that the numbers mean your fingers: the first is your index finger, number 2,3,4 are your other fingers and number 5 is your thumb.
I won't lie: it was hard and painful. Yes, painful cause the first time I put my fingers on the strings I thought "ok, this is impossible. It's bloody masochistic" . However, after sitting down and grabbing my brother's guitar again and again and again, after trying to play it many-many times it started sounding like a song. Then one day I woke up, sit down, tried to play the song and I finally understood: "OMG, it's easy, you just keep putting your fingers to different places" Sounds stupid? Yes, it does but after that I just understood and learnt where to put my fingers, how to play some basic chords and it wasn't that painful anymore. Yepp, my fingers looked terrible for many weeks but I can tell you: it worth it!
There are many songs which has the same, easy chords - Taylor Swift songs have really eeasy chords and are perfect for those ones who want to learn to play the guitar.

Youtube is also a great help, as many amazing people do great tutorials for various songs.
For me it was easy, I could always borrow my brother's guitar. However, if you can borrow one from someone or if you can afford a cheap one and you really want it: you can learn to play the guitar from the internet! How amazing is that???! When people ask me "where did you learn this?" and I answer "from the internet" they just keep staring at me, not knowing that it is not that hard after all.
No, I can not play it perfectly, I do not know many chords and if you put sheet-music in front of me, I will just stare at you not knowing what to do, but I can sit down on lonely nights, close my eyes and play and sing! It is an amazing feeling and helps me to get through hard times (like when I wasn't sure if me and now-my-boyfriend would get together and I played "untouchable" by Taylor Swift every single night)

For my 19th birthday I got my own guitar from my brother, I love it! It is from Cort.

It is also good to have a capo as it is needed many times to play the easy version of songs :)

I use really soft pickers but after a while I learnt to strum without them ( the first time I tried, it looked impossible)
I really hope that you like this post and that I could inspire you to be brave and try to learn new things from the internet- After all, it is an amazing place :)
Have a lovely weekend!
Alexandra