Growing up, we're always trying to find a way to fit in. A way to feel like we belong somewhere for once. For girls, it can be even harder because of the standards we're set up to follow. We have to be fit, funny, happy, and pretty. It's easy, right? Wrong. Sometimes girls just can't squeeze their rounded edges into the sharp corners of the puzzle. I should know, I was one of those girls my entire life.

All through high school, I was trying to find where I fit, where I felt the most accepted. Where people seemed genuinely happy to have me around. I did theater, a place where on the stage I felt like I was in a living heaven. Yet, when those lights went off, I was left standing center stage alone while the others went off together to do the kind of things friends did. Something I still didn't know about. I even turned to singing and joined a group of people who loved what I loved. There, it had to be a perfect fit. Again I was proven wrong like before. Everyone was so much more talented than me, the other's standing out more talent wise than I ever would. Together we made music, then when we were dismissed I was the girl watching everyone's snap stories with everyone else. Everyone but me.

When I graduated I thought I had lost all chances of finding my home away from home. Going into the loneliest summer I could remember, I wanted it to rush to when it was time to leave for college. Ready to leave the loneliness behind including the constant reminders of how few friends I had. Soon the time came and I was moving into my dorm. With so many things changing like having to share a room, moving to an entirely new town, even the atmosphere was different, I wasn't sure of anything except one thing:

I would never, EVER, join a sorority.

We've all seen those movies of the dumb, stuck up girls who joined sororities and were mean to anyone who wasn't them. The shows where they made girls do embarrassing things just to even get considered becoming a member. Who would want to ever join that? Something so malicious with such low standards? If only I had known how wrong I, and all of those shows, really were.

If it hadn't been for my roommate, I never would have even considering rushing. Having to dress up three nights in a row just to get judged by a bunch of girls I never knew. At first, I thought I would be miserable. Then as the nights passed, it was one of the best decisions of my life.

Every house welcomed me with open arms, and each one knew how to make me feel like I wasn't so far from home. They all shared their stories with me as I shared mine and I started to understand why so many students went Greek. Why people called them a 'family'. Then the day I got my bid was the day I felt everything fall into place like my puzzle piece had found its place.

At first, I was nervous: what if they didn't like me? What if they thought accepting me was an awful idea? Not even a week into my new sisterhood all my doubts were wiped away like chalk on a sidewalk after a storm.

For the first time, I had somewhere where I walk in and felt like almost everyone was happy to see me. I had a place that when I started struggling with my inner demons, that I could go and have an entire house ready to give me fuzzy blankets and jokes ready to make me cry from laughing instead. Here was a family where if I want to make a run to Taco Bell at 2 in the morning, there would be at least 10 girls ready to cram into my car. And, for the first time, I felt loved.