The end of mean girls

This morning I was scrolling down my news feed on Facebook and came across this video by Laci Green on Upworthy. After watching it, I felt the need to write a blog post about it, as it really struck a cord with me.

Not entirely sure if I have ever mentioned this here on my blog, but I was bullied for pretty much all of the 9 years of primary and secondary school. It stopped only after I moved on to the upper secondary school. So I have experienced girl hate, as Laci Green put it on her video, first hand.

I do not want to turn this into a heart wrenching story that will make you reach for the nearest tissue box or a bowl of ice cream. I was bullied, it made me feel absolutely miserable about myself and the mental scars are still there, but I got over it, for the most part. I can thank D and my best friends for that. So just like girls/women can be unbelievably cruel to each other, we can be supportive to each other as well. We can help each other grow into the people we were always meant to be. Not just us girls, boys/men too.

As Laci Green mentions on her video, we have a lot of pressure on us these days. The pressure to be pretty, smart, successful, driven, sexy, independent, the perfect girlfriend/wife/mother, and all those other things we are told to be is a heavy burden. It is enough to make anyone snap. Depression, eating disorders, you name it, are killing people every year. Literally. We are bombarded by messages telling us that we are not good enough.

To make things even worse, it is not some alien enemy telling us these things. We tell each other that we are not good enough. Why do we spend the time and energy on putting on our make-up and choosing the perfect outfit before we head out the door? We do it because if we do not, someone else, most probably a woman, will either say something, or judge us by just looking at us. Well, that is what we think. Probably because there always is that one person who will make us feel worse about ourselves for not being "good enough."

I never fit in. I never said the right things, never wore the right clothes, never could find the balance of being smart but not "too smart." I never could please others, no matter how much I tried. Instead of blaming the others, I blamed myself. I had simply failed, again. If I tried just one time more, maybe this time I would not fail and others would no longer shun me out. Of course, I never succeeded. I was never "good enough." The funny, or actually, the sad thing is, no-one ever told me those things in those exact words, well except for a few times. Still, somehow the message came across.

It was not until I met D that I started to realise that perhaps, as there was someone who saw so many good things in me, I was not that bad after all. Ever since I have been taking small steps on my journey to discover that perhaps I am good enough. Good enough the way I am. Not perfect, because there is no such thing, but good enough.

Watching the video I also realised something else. I realised that as much I have been trying to tell myself that I am good enough, I have not been telling myself that others are good enough as well, good enough the way they are. I should not judge when I see someone wear/do/say/like their thing. It may not be the same thing I would do, but they are not me. Their good enough is not my good enough, and there lies the whole point. We should never judge other people by our own standards because our standards are not theirs. We can not all fit into the same box, and why should we?

So, instead of trying to make others fit into our way of thinking, we should support and encourage them on their way to finding out just how amazing they are just because they are themselves. We should inspire others to love themselves because one can never truly love someone else before they have learnt to love themselves.

It is really that simple.

Learn to love yourself the way you are and learn to love others the way they are.