Growth.

This blog post will get very vulnerable and deep very fast, so just prepare yourself. In high school, I never struggled with confidence. I was around beautiful classmates every day and not once did I think twice about my body or looks when I was standing in my mirror. However, with being in a relationship I developed a lot of insecurites I did not have before. I started working out twice as hard in the gym, lost so much weight that my doctor even told me if I don't start eating more he could diagnose me with an eating disorder, drowned myself in makeup I did not even know how to use in the first place, and buried my long brown hair into a bleach blonde dye that has now chemically ruined my hair for years.

I was not me. I did not even recognize me. I was changing myself to look like these girls on social media who probably did not even exist. I used to get compliments about my long, dark brown hair. Now, all I got was two hundred dollars given to the hair dresser in cash for changing my dark locks into chemically processed bleach.

Why did I do all of this you ask? No, it was not due to my relationship or the person I was with. It was not due to social media girls who I know had thousands of dollars written to plastic surgeons for an 'hourglass figure.' Absolutely not. It was because I did not know who I was and who I was meant to be. I did not know that being top ranked in your class at a university meant more than my social media comments. I did not know that the color of my hair mattered less than the color of my heart. I did not know that the amount of likes on social media could never amount to the of love I shared with the people around me- FACE TO FACE. I was unaware of LIFE itself.

The world has become a scary place with dark people. We have been assembled into a society where girls on OnlyFans make more than nurses and doctors in less than a day. Social media matters more than a LinkedIN profile, and the Gucci bag held in an Instagram post matters more than the cardboard signs out on the streets due to homelessness. This is the lifestyle we have been accustomed to living in, and I got caught in it myself.

The scariest thing you can do in this world is to change yourself for it. Stop trying to be someone you aren't. There are too many Kylie Jenners and not enough Maya Angelou's. Stop trying to conform to society. Stay on your own path and focus on your mental health before your physical. Love your body. Love the one who made you. Love the person you are in the mirror. Be confidently you.

Keep the brown hair.

Listen to those Christian songs.

Go to the gym for yourself.

Don't worry about his Snap Score.

Read your Bible.

Embrace your pale skin.

Go get Sunni Skies Ice Cream (brownie batter is the bombbbb).

Show off that no makeup face.

Buy the outift.

Delete the rude comments.

Take a trash bag and throw the old you OUT for good!