I have always been the kind of person to always speak the truth. And some people can’t handle the truth and some beckon it, as if it is their one last request.
But the truth is something incredibly terrifying.
What lay beneath the truth could be someone’s dreams or someone’s worst nightmare.
No matter how much people lie, and the effects that come with it to our hearts and our trust. There is something so much worse than someone lying to our face.
It’s when we have the audacity to lie to ourselves.
Lie when we know we are pretending to be okay when we know we aren’t.
Lie when we believe the whispers and the laughs in the halls.
Lie when we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, "they're right, I am nothing."
I grew up in a world where no matter how much weight I lost and make-up I painted on my face I was never going to win. Growing up, seeing the Ads, the magazines, the commercials, the TV shows and the movies. It was like as if I was running a marathon my whole life, and all I wanted was to win, to be something. But you can only run for so long, you can only change so much about yourself until your just a sad depiction of what you use to be.
I use to think I was the only girl who hated themselves, who wanted to be prettier and be better than anyone else. I thought I was the only girl who would cry because they couldn’t fit into those sized jeans or they couldn’t afford those shoes that everyone owned.
Growing up and finding myself, I figured out I was not the only girl to feel completely alone when it came to the amount of pressure it was to be perfect.
I thought I was the only girl who watched models and wished for a moment that they could be that pretty, that for a moment they too wouldn’t have to be themselves.
I’m not going to lie. I always wanted to fit in. I always wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted the hair, so I relaxed it. I wanted the face, so I devoured my skin into beauty products. I wanted the body, so I went on a couple diets.
I wanted to be perfect.
And it took me a really long time to realize being dressed a certain way, and acting a certain way is never going to make me feel okay. I went through my adolescence wanting to be like everyone else. And it took me a hell of a long time to realize that there are no people to measure up to. Perfection is impossible and normal is just a stereotype.
Many of you might be wondering why I’m mentioning this. My oh so delicate years of self-pity and denial.
Well, it’s because, when I was a kid there was so much pressure to be a certain size and look a certain way. And it was exhausting. Waking up at 6 am to do my hair and my makeup and only being in 9th grade. Honestly, what the hell. Looking back at who I used to be, its suffocating and it's scary. Now, kids grow up in a world with even more pressure to be perfect. A perfect so high, the only person who could ever reach that level of perfection is written in fairytales.
And it makes me sad, to see girls like me and all the other girls who did whatever it took to be ‘perfect’, mentally and physically kill themselves just to get over 100 likes on social media. Just to be accepted and just be like everyone else. We are born into a world that never even gave us a chance to begin with.
And that is the reason I am writing this.
There is no right or wrong in being who you are. There is no judge who looks at you every day to see how well you look. In fact, the only person that matters when it comes to you, is…, well …you.
Who cares what clothes you wear and how much they cost. Who cares if a Kardashian wore this sweater one time and everyone went bananas over it. You live one life. You get one chance. To be the best version of yourself you could possibly be. Why waste it on caring what people think? Why waste your life on being someone you’re not?
To all the people growing up right now, wishing they could be anyone else but themselves. Go look into a mirror, go ahead, look. Because the only person who sees the awful things you do, is only yourself. Everyone is different and that is what makes us so great. We shouldn’t have to live towards a standard just because the media and other people tell us to.
I don’t lie, and that is why when I say adolescents was one of the hardest things to go through, I mean it. It was as if I was holding my breath for years and I was just waiting for someone to tell me to let go. So, from one girl who would suffer from their own self-esteem problems and their ideals on beauty; don’t let other people define your path in life. Don’t let negative words and pressure build you into something that ensures you cannot stand on your own. Because when this is all over, when you walk across that stage and get that diploma. No one in the real world is going to care about what shoes you own, what phone you just bought and they sure as hell are not going to care about what any person said about you in those despicable days of adolescent hell. Instead, when you walk into that real world and you leave that bubble you have been trapped in your whole life. You will see that there is nothing more beautiful than yourself.
It's okay to make mistakes, to be brave, to stand up for what you believe in and it is okay to be different than others around you. Each person in this world contains their set of beauty and that no one else can copy. Each person is unique and following your own path is more than okay.
Don’t listen to what others say, don’t judge yourself based on the person next to you is saying and sure as hell don’t alter yourself because you feel like you have to.
The YOU that you are is enough. And it will always be enough as long as you let it be.
In the end, the only person that is right about how you live your life, is ultimately you.
Try not to lie to yourself, because the more we lie, the more we end up turning our lies into the truth.
