By definition, “an ideal is a value, desire or goal which motivates you to spend your time, energy and effort toward its achievement.” In order to set goals and make plans, we must first know who we are.
In my life, I have always struggled with ideals, with who I am and who I aim to become. Yet I am not alone in this feeling, knowing that simple task is a battle many cannot seem to conquer. We constantly have a standard that we are being asked to live up to. Whether that is at school, in sports, or at home, the pressure to be the best is all around us. The same people who tell us to be our own person are the people who are telling us who they want us to be. I secretly just want to scream about how I don’t know who I am at all, and the last thing on my mind is what I want to do in life.
High school is hard; we have labels slapped upon us and stereotypes that consume us. I have always struggled with image. In fact, I was so consumed by attempting to achieve the flawless image that I fell into utter oblivion. I conformed to stereotypes and labels placed upon me, against my will, yet I did not resist. My identity was simply pushed further and further away from ever revealing its true self as I continued to be who I was told. I began to bear a mask that has so many layers I don’t even know my own face anymore.
I was supposed to be strong … I was supposed to be able to hide my pain, yet inside and out every piece of me was crumbling; I had to eventually shut myself out to ignore the world that was against me. I separated myself from the old me and had no motivation to care about anything in my life. It was like I couldn’t do anything to escape the pain except to turn to people and things that made me feel absolutely nothing. Some of my biggest regrets in life will always be from this time. I had no idea who I was turning into, but I knew I had to get out of this hole I had dug myself into before I continued to spiral downwards. And before too long, “rock bottom became a solid foundation on which I began to rebuild my life.”
Of course, as I write this, I only wish I had the next couple words of advice to listen to myself. Never keep anyone around that makes you feel less than you are worth.
As you go on, labels never stop hurting, but I did realize something in all this pain. One of my favorite quotes states this: “I used to worry about the labels others placed on me…until I realized my limitations weren’t coming from their labels, but from my own.” When others are in control of making you feel worthless, it is easy to lose sight of who you are. When you find yourself in a place so hurt and so vulnerable, you in turn become you own worst nightmare. The mistake and the people that hurt you do not go away, but ever so slowly the tears and pain turn into strength. You start to find a little light at the end of the dark road that once seemed so inescapable. Something that you must remember is that, no matter what life brings, only you can define the ideal you.
If anything, I now know that people are always going to tell you who to be, people are always going to slap whatever label they want on you, and oftentimes you are going to feel restrained by what others think of you. The battle in life is not to fight being the person others want us to be, for that part is easy. The battle is to find within yourself who you want to be.
It took me a very long time and a lot of help before I ever realized this. And there is no one I can thank more for this than the incredible people I am surrounded by each day. I have quite simply the most amazing friends in the entire world, and they know that I wouldn’t be here without them. They gave me the motivation to keep going when every ounce of me was ready to just give it all up. They gave me the strength to fight my battle, and reminded me I was never alone.
My past occasionally scares me but has also made me who I am today. My greatest pain became my greatest strength. But here I am, a few months later. When I look back on the girl I was, I could not have been more wrong about how the next few years of my life were going to go. When everything you thought you were is ripped away from you, it is hard to get back up and move on. The road to recovery has many obstacles, and it is not going to be easy, but finding love and support from those around you makes that journey a little easier. Life is about finding who you are; it is constant and ongoing process that cannot be achieved in any short period of time.
For a long time, I lost myself trying to hold on to what people who didn’t care about me or who I was. I was trying so hard to be what others saw in me, that I didn’t even realize who I wanted to be. I was so confused and so lost that I became oblivious to the fact that in allowing others to define me I let go of my own values and ideals.
We have so much ahead of us and setting goals is going to get rough because they are bound to change. It is going to be frustrating, and there are times in which we will all feel alone, but please never give up. I promise, the beginning is always the hardest.
It is up to each one of us to recognize our own ideals because we are the only ones who can devote our lives to them. When we can come to love ourselves and all that we are, we can learn to believe in who we are. Nobody seems to tell us that it is okay to call yourself beautiful, that it is okay to smile at your reflection in a mirror. You should love your waist, and your legs, regardless of their size … for they are yours.
This does not make you conceited, I promise. Be confident in who you are, because you only get one shot at this life. Don’t waste it letting others tell you who to be. Instead of using your fingers to point at all your flaws, use them to name off all the things you excel in. acknowledge your beauty and your intelligence. For in this world, you can never rely on other people to believe in yourself for you. And never forget that in the sum of it all you will always be someone greater than your mistakes.
