"In the beginning, people think vulnerability will make you weak, but it does the opposite. It shows you're strong enough to care."
-Victoria Pratt

I vividly remember the first time I removed my mask and willingly made myself vulnerable without a care as to who would notice.

December 1, 2016. A single post was all it took to break me down into the bare bones I felt inside and expose the shattered image I desperately wanted to hide.

But when I pressed submit, broadcasting my emotional turmoil, my weaknesses and greatest fears to the world, the chains around my body collapsed and I suddenly felt free. No longer restrained by the cultural norms that slam individuals that choose to expose themselves to society.

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard general chemistry students explain to me their fears of being wrong. Choosing instead to remain silent, not answering the obvious, they conceal all that they are curious about and robotically move throughout the course. Never truly grasping the material until Organic Chemistry slaps them in the face.

Because for any of my science friends, we will inevitably be wrong more times than right in Orgo. And how humbling a lesson that is for us survivors that make it through.

But it goes beyond the classroom and daunting reactions that haunt us at night. The bigger issue is that people are too afraid to remove their masks and expose their true feelings.

So we walk when inside we are begging to skip along the street. So we stand despite the need for a few more hours of sleep, alone time or a good cry. We smile instead of screaming.

And so we post bullsh** on our social media, proclaiming the "good" in our lives, highlighting our happiest milliseconds instead of the weeks we cried ourselves to sleep.

No, I'm not saying that we should flood our Instagrams with mascara streaked pics every hour and beg for sympathy. But why can't we admit that some days just aren't as good as others? Why can't we admit that we are perfectly imperfect?

I did not ruin my life the day that I decided to stop caring how people viewed me or my social media. Nor did I ruin my chances of ever being successful by admitting that I am a hot mess some days.

I made myself human.

And with it, I began my exploration for self-love. Which ultimately lead to some of the greatest friends I ever hoped to have. It lead to emotional highs and unfortunate lows. But most importantly, it removed the perfectionist stigma.

To the average person, when a teacup shatters we see it as irreparable and so we throw it away. Forgetting the use that it once held for us, pitying the beautiful design now in pieces in our garbage cans.

And yet we do the same thing to ourselves and others. We throw away our emotions when they become unhappy. We burn the self-deprecating thoughts even though they will resurrect out of the ashes to haunt us as we try to go to sleep. And we invalidate the idea of ever acknowledging our struggles to humanity.

But if we instead chose to glue the teacup back together, filing its cracks with gold a passerby might call it beautiful. Powerful.

Because unless you have been pulverized to ash, you are still capable of rebirth. You are still capable of love, possibility and a choice. A choice to acknowledge the hells that once tried to bury you, or the choice to pretend it never happened.

I hope you fail at something.

How incredibly humbling it is to read that rejection letter. How frustrating it is to be denied by the man of your dreams. How irritating it is to fail a test you studied HOURS on.

And yet how incredibly EMPOWERING it is to pick yourself back up. To try again. To find your worth broken into little pieces as you begin to glue them back together.

To finally admit your scars and remove the mask that you once believed protected you. And to yell at the top of your lungs that you are not okay, but that one day you will be.

The day that I decided to "publicly humiliate myself," as I once called it, became one of my proudest moments. Because I realized that the very scars I once tried to hide from the world, would always be my most beautiful qualities.

I hope that one day you might begin to embrace your greatest fears and flaws for what they truly are. Imperfect and yet exceptionally beautiful with enough power and strength to move mountains.