As a little girl, growing up we watch our mothers every move. We watch her as she is getting ready in the morning. How she puts on her make up and fixes her hair and makes it look all so easily and how we wish we could do the same. We are all so eager to grow up when we are little, but I so desperately would love sometimes to go back to those much simpler days.

As we grow older, we find our best friends who we think will be by our side for the rest of our life. We laugh together, take silly pictures together, and make up dances in the living room together. We do everything together. We are attached to the hip and nothing can change that.

Then, we get even older. We approach high school and slowly but surely everyone starts to find their group of friends. Many friends grow apart because they join a sports team or an academic organization.

Next thing you know it's senior year, and you want so badly to soak up every moment because you think it will be the best days of your life. The football games and pep rallies, homecoming week, having classes with your best friends, and skipping those classes to go grab lunch, and every single second in between. You think that it doesn't get any better than this. You think you can only be friends with the people in your "group." You think that there is nothing else outside of your small town. You think life should basically end because who are you without those same people you grew up with your entire life? Who are you when you aren't defined by the team you joined in high school? Who are you when all of that is gone and it's just you in the big old world?

I'm sure these questions might terrify you just as they did me at one time. I didn't know who I was going to grow up and be. I didn't know what job I wanted to have in the future. There was so much uncertainly, but there is one thing I knew for sure. I wanted to become the best version of me that I could. I wanted to find my best self and push her every day to become the person she was really meant to be, so I did just that.

I left my small town that I had been born and raised in. I moved only an hour away, but it was the best thing that could ever happen to me. I discovered what life was like outside of my town. I discovered all different kinds of walks of life that people come from. I discovered what is was like to live on my own and not under my parent's house. I discovered what it was like to have people truly love and accept you for you.

Moving away and going to college was hands down the best experience of my life. I went for things that I never thought that I could have gotten. I was finally doing what I thought was best for me and me only. I didn't have to think of what other people would think. I didn't have to consider what my friends would say. I was being 100% authentically me, and it was the most eye opening experience ever.

When we are younger, we are so much more vulnerable. We care so much about how others will look at us and what they will have to say, but when you truly start living for you, when you start doing things to make you happy, you will find yourself in ways you have never before, and you will surround yourself with people who encourage you to do whatever makes you happiest. You will find friends who clap louder for your success than anyone else because they genuinely care about you and are your biggest fans.

Although high school was great, and I have some amazing memories, I am so beyond thankful for the life after college where I found my best self, where I found the friends I know I will have in my life forever, where I stopped living for others and started living for me. I became the person I always wanted to be, and I hope you do too.