I've never wanted to be me because I've always managed to find someone better. Someone I could fixate on, envy and compare myself to. Someone skinnier, more fun and outgoing. Someone who doesn't seemed phased by the flaws that plague and consume me.
Like that one celebrity with a nice body and unblemished skin, or even the girl beside me in class with enough humor and charisma to win her a friend in anyone she meets.
Why can't I make people laugh the way she can? Why is it so much harder for me to make friends? Or to even get people to like me. People like the makeup gurus and travel bloggers on my Instagram with thousands of followers. Followers who give them hundreds of likes on photos that they've gotten paid to take from mesmerizing places around the world.
These are my thoughts everyday, when I wake up in the morning until I go to bed at night.
Even now as I'm writing this, listening to Adele and her breathtaking vocal range. How is she so fabulous? It seems to just comes naturally, along with her impeccable winged eyeliner and wispy red hair. I wish I could sing like her... or even at all.
It's exhausting, depressing and even more recently, humiliating.
Humiliating because for the longest time I denied myself, denied who I was, so that I could be more like another. I was ashamed to be me, but what I didn't realize was that the shame in itself was shameful.
Okay, so I'm not Kylie Jenner. But at the end of the day, is that really so bad?
There was a time I would have told you "yes." But now, I'm not so sure.
I kind of like my life and the flaws that go with it.
Just look at last week, for example. After miraculously surviving midterms week, I flew to Whistler, Canada, to meet my family who I hadn't seen in 2 months. My little sisters fought to hug me first as they raced to the hotel door when they heard me knocking.
I spent the next couple days in an amazing place buried in powdered snow between enormous, pine covered mountains. In the mornings, we woke up to crisp mountain air and a soft snow fall. And in the evenings, we hit the slopes, weaving around the hills through tree-covered trails.
It was beautiful. But it was also ridiculously hard. Having not skied in five years I fell; a lot.
And then there was the panic attack I had when I realized I was on a much harder slope than my skill level could handle. I was standing on the mountain peak hyperventilating while kids a third of my age sped by me, fearless and determined. And found myself comparing again.
Why am I afraid? Why is it so easy for them? What's wrong with me?
But then I got so tired of these pathetic questions that were keeping me paralyzed on the top of that mountain, and, more importantly, paralyzed as an individual person.
I made it down that mountain, and every other one we went up that week - hugely in part because of my family's incredible support. But I did it, and I was proud.
And I loved my life and realized I kind of always have. So I'm letting go of this irrational need to mimic someone else's.
Okay, so my life won't always consist of that picturesque week, but it does have the same people. People who love me. And while I can't afford to jetset to another country tomorrow like some big-time bloggers, that week was more than enough until I travel again.
And that's the key.
Realizing your life is enough because it's yours. Kylie may have her own make-up line, but she'll never have that week.
