I am not the same person I was five years ago. I am not the same person I was a year ago even, or honestly, a month ago. I hope that you aren’t either.
Every day, I learn something new. I am constantly evolving and changing. Sometimes, these changes aren’t for the better. Some days, I look into the mirror and I don’t like what I see. But tomorrow, I have the power to change that. In the next minute, I have the power to change. That is the beauty of this journey that we call life. We don’t have to remain the same person every second, every day, every year – we can shift and evolve as many times as we like. This is something I didn’t fully understand until this past year.
Throughout High School, as many do, I was struggling to find who I was. For a majority of the four years I spent there, I was very unhappy. Not because of the school or the people, but because I felt like I needed to know who I was, who I wanted to be, and I had no idea who either of those people were.
Now, having graduated High School three years ago, having gone to college for almost three years and hating it, and now working as a waitress with no real idea of what career I want to end up in, my first reaction having become this girl was shame. A little less than a year ago, when I admitted to myself that college wasn’t working for me, I was angry. I was mad at myself, because I was supposed to be the girl who had it all figured out. I did very well in High School, my grades were always high. My grades were great in college too, but I was a different person than the girl who had first enrolled.
I’m not angry at that girl anymore. I’m not angry at myself anymore. I was finally able to accept that I am shifting every day, and that being angry with that doesn’t make much sense.
Five years ago, I was a teenager struggling with her identity, shy and extremely introverted. Three years ago I was finally truly happy with where I was and who I was for the first time that I could remember. Last year, I was a very sad girl again and I thought for a while that I was never going to be happy again. Yesterday, I was empowered, strong, I felt on top of the world. Today, I am missing someone, this morning I was pretty scared for the safety of someone I love, and I didn’t feel all that strong. Tomorrow, who knows who I’ll be. But that’s just it.
I can be whoever I want to be. Happy, sad, strong, excited. Vegan, fitness oriented, lazy, relaxed. Whoever and whatever I want to be – I can be it today. And tomorrow I can be the same girl or someone else entirely.
It’s totally up to me. As far as we know for certain, we only get this one life. There is a real beauty in that I wish more people would see. Why stay the same when there are so many beautiful things to be?
A Kinda Pretty Mess 