Some of the hardest things we face in life are unquantifiable. We don’t know how these entities hurt us or how they can pry at us for so long, we just know that we can’t shake it. We know that even little reminders of that hurt can set us back and steps in the right direction are twisty and small. Compiling so much emotion in one soul is so much work and putting out the little fires in the twines of our being is more challenging than we let on. Whatever the hurt, spark a different light inside you and let yourself breath in cleaner air.

It wasn’t leaving for school. It wasn’t one relationship. It wasn’t what I was going to do with the rest of my life. It was no one thing. One day I just realized how much I had changed. How different I had become and where my mind has grown to. Somewhere along the way of all the new shiny things popping up in my life, I myself was not so bright and yellow.

Somewhere in there, I had lost a part of myself.

You grow so much in this phase of life. New people, a yearning to explore, minimal expertise in any one area, a thirst for fun. You are doing your thing and making it work. And then you’re not. One thing gets caught, your intricate net of activity is tangled and your boots are kicking to put it all back. The soul can only carry so much.

That’s it, though. One day you’re in pearls and heels but the next its black sunglasses and wine-stained sweatpants. Like the last personality, you wait to show to someone close to you is the one that has consumed you and you can’t remember what it’s like to be all done up. That’s what it feels like to be in the back of your soul seeing how full you have the capacity to be, but with nothing purposeful to fill it with.

This is worth. This is the difference between how you carry yourself, how you project yourself, what you pride yourself in, and how you handle the grind, spills, falls, hate, judgment, fear, loss. When you lose your worth, you forget the part of your giant soul that keeps you on your feet. That when you look in a mirror, you see good before you see something wrong. That part of when you’re challenged allows you to face it and keep your cheeks unturned. When you forget that worth, there’s more than a broken heart at stake.

You can get worth from a unique concoction of this and that. You don’t even have control over it, your mind just knows what it wants to hear and feel, so without those hidden needs, you don’t always know what to think. That’s what makes girls really complicated because there’s obviously something we want, but we may not even be able to dictate what that exactly is. Heck, we could have watched a movie when we were six years old, believed a specific image that we don’t even remember now but still try to find that in our own realities, where make-believe isn’t how we play at this age.

A big hurt and a big loss to a person is when they let someone else be the guardian of their worth. They let a person control how they feel about themselves and anything else happening. When someone else’s opinions regulate your own, you lose so much of yourself then and even more when they’re not that person for you anymore. At that point, you realize you were never in control and still aren’t.

If you know anyone that has experienced this, they’ll probably tell you that there has been nothing more draining and defeating than teaching yourself to love and appreciate who you are again. To reteach yourself that you’re worth it in your own eyes. Understanding yourself enough to accept change, face your challenges, and thrive again. To control yourself and your perception of how experiences and people come in and out of your life.

This is how you better yourself. You phase in and out, constantly working up to your own version of ‘good enough.’ And despite how hard that is, despite how much of your soul you have to keep refilling, you always get the final say on who you are and how you are. Nothing should make you forget that.