Unfortunately I'm so stressed out all the time with taking 6 classes (5 undergrad and 1 grad) and working 30 hours a week while trying to get straight A's - not gonna happen this semester, by the way - that I can't enjoy it and concentrate on it like I'd like to.
Even so, I've learned so much about self control and having your own value system and they are all topics I want to write about on this blog someday.
But today, I want to talk about self esteem and self worth.
My professor posed a question today: "If tomorrow everything you have was gone - your family, your possessions, your friends - what would be left?"
For me, while losing everything would, quite frankly, suck, I wouldn't be left with nothing. I would be left with me. A sarcastic, down to earth, dreamer who is optimistic, enthusiastic, and gets trapped in her head sometimes. I like to be outside, on the beach or in a field. Give me a pen and a pad of paper and I could write down all the stories I ever wanted to write but kept getting distracted by things and people.
I don't know how many people would know themselves. Before I was 16? There was no way I could tell you who I was.
My professor said that people who lose things they love tend to have a better idea of who they are. "What does not kill you, makes you stronger." I don't know if that is necessarily true for everyone, but it is true for me.
Now, my professor lost everything when she was 9 - her family, her money, her nice clothes, but that is her story to tell. I didn't lose everything, but when I was 16, it sure felt like I did.
I had always been the weird one, skinny, awkward. I had had a shot of having a real friend group but I had the horrible combination where I was intelligent, passionate, and dramatic. I wanted to read epic stories and learn new things, but I also wanted the human drama that is usually only accompanied by the popular crowd. The smart kids were too boring for me and I was too "wild" for them. The popular kids were too vapid for me and I was too "weird" for them.
I had attained this truly awful human being of a best friend in junior high, I'll call her Frenemy. She was super fun to be around but it was laced with her consistently putting me down and dictating what was "cool." (Literally, everything, too. Down to what razors and shaving creams were "cool" and which were "lame." I had to BEG my mom to get me Satin Care over Skintimate. It was obnoxious.) Plus she had gained a posse who were also not very nice to me. They bred me to be very insecure. They would joke that I was the 40-year Old Virgin - that movie had just come out - and that no one would ever want to date me. Boys were not exactly beating down my door at the time, so, who was I to prove them wrong?
However, by staying friends with Frenemy, who desperately wanted to be popular, she got me an "in" with the popular girls in eighth grade and that's when I met Free Spirit, who then introduced me to Blondie.
They became my best friends and they actually liked me and were nice to me. They tried to build me up - and change me in the process, but whatever - instead of kick me down and make me feel hopeless. And they were cool! They were the coolest of the cool girls. Which made me feel cool too! Alas, I wasn't.
I remained best friends with them all through freshman year and into sophomore year. But then, tragedy struck! I had been videoblogging at the time and some boys at my school discovered it and I became publicly weird. I was jeered at in the hallway and people were relentlessly mean about it. My friends had know about them but once they stopped getting invited to parties because of me, they started to distance themselves.
Then I actually had no one.
Or so I thought.
I didn't want anyone else, I just wanted them. Honestly, I loved them so much before I even knew what love was and my heart was torn to shreds when they left me.
I spent about 6 months without any friends.
And boy, it sucked. It was super painful and awful but I wouldn't change any of these events for the world.
Because in those 6 months, for the first time since puberty, I actually LIKED myself. I learned who I was and what I liked. I learned that liking video games and fantasy novels wasn't a bad thing. I made friends with a girl in my science class that I had always clicked with, Tender Heart, and opened my mind and heart to things I had never experienced before.
I became better and confident and if I had continued hanging out with those girls, I wouldn't be where I am today.
This self-discovery, self-knowledge is not new, obviously, but it is ever changing. Every day I try to love myself a little more so I can continue being the confident, enigmatic, and a little zany woman that proudly pounds the streets of Chicago in stiletto Heels and torn up short shorts (in summer, in winter it's Uggs, Uggs, and more Uggs - They look like bear paws and I like feeling like a snow bear).
I know my direction got a little back and forth there in the middle but I've been up since 7 am and I need to go to bed so I can study for finals tomorrow. LEAVE MY BRAIN ALONE!
Happy finals to all my college kids out there and I hate everyone else,
xoxo
Little Tornado
** DISCLAIMER ** Free Spirit and I still remain close friends and I have gotten some solid apologies from her some time ago. She is a wonderful person, one of my dearest friends, and her tattoo actually came out a lot better than I thought it would.
I may not exactly get the path she's going down right now, but that doesn't mean it's a wrong path.
WWPD
(What Would Pocahontas Do?)
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