Don’t Waste Time Becoming The Wrong Version of You

There’s a version of me I spent years trying to grow into.

She was always a little more polished. A  little more free. A little more “cool girl in the corner” than I ever was.

She didn’t cry watching SPCA commercials.

She didn’t double text.

She knew how to carve her eyebrows and always said “thank you” instead of “sorry.”

She was every Pinterest mood board I’ve ever saved, all vanilla girl aesthetic and emotional modesty.

But she wasn’t me.

I think we all do this. We frame ourselves out of what we think will be loved. We stitch ourselves together with bits of admiration from strangers, Vogue covers, characters in movies who never seem to need anyone. We go over our personalities like scripts. We examine our softness so we can be more palatable. More preferential.

And then one day, you look up and realize: 

You don’t even like the girl you became.

… 

I have learned that becoming isn’t always progress. Sometimes it’s performance. Sometimes it’s angst, disguised as glow serum and curated playlists.

And while reinvention can be healing, becoming the false version of you – the one built from pressure, not authenticity – is utterly exhausting. You will spend all your energy trying to maintain a self that was never viable in the first place.

So now, I’m doing this instead:

Becoming the version of me that cries when something upsets her. Who is clingy sometimes and calm sometimes and genuine all the time. Who absolutely needs people. Who completely forgives herself. Who has roots, not just polish.

The realest version of me may not be the most admired, but she is the one I can absolutely live with. 

And that matters more.