A lot of people have New Year’s resolutions, but as I move home and reflect about the past year at my freshman year of college, I realize I have learned a lot about myself. There were parts of the year that were the hardest parts of my life to this point, and there were parts of the year that were the happiest I have ever been. However, from this point forward I only want things to get better. I don’t want those hard parts back. So from this summer and every day after, my resolution is to not let the hard parts repeat.
Before coming to college I was extremely happy. I was one of the people who loved high school; I thrived in high school. I thought going to college would automatically be the same way, and since I was the top of my class in high school and involved in everything and able to have a friendly conversation with anyone that passed by that I was going to be successful and that everything in life was going to be easy. I realized quickly within my first few days of college that was not true. Things were not as easy as they were in high school and I became obsessed with the idea that I peaked in high school. This thought consumed me. I became my over analytical self that over thinks and over interprets every situation to think that I am doing something completely wrong with my life if everything isn’t going absolutely perfect. I believe that every door that is closed is a door that is closed because I somehow screwed everything up.
This year I quickly learned how bad that mentality is. Never having to deal with it much in high school, I never realized how harsh I was on myself. My plans for freshman year were not exactly as I planned, and as things went off track I got more and more angry at myself, and I became obsessed with thinking that something had to be wrong with me if I wasn’t the social butterfly, the best student, and the over-involved person that I had been in the past. It is then that I began subconsciously degrading myself with every chance I got. It started out not that bad, but it quickly escalated me to saying “I hate myself” as a quick joke anytime I did something that was not entirely as I planned. It became a “joke” to me to joke about how I felt ugly, or like I was a mess, or awkward, or stupid, or out of place. I started pointing out my flaws that way if other people noticed them they would think that it was something I knew about and just lived with it because I thought that would make me look stronger. I was foolish enough to think that joking about disliking myself would make me look stronger.
However, it wasn’t a joke. I legitimately began to dislike myself as I person. I stopped thinking of myself as someone who is smart. I stopped thinking of myself as someone who could talk and have a meaningful conversation with anyone. I tried to distance myself away from people because I wanted to seem independent because in the past I was independent without trying to be. I wanted to look the part that way people would notice, so then I would feel like I actually was who I used to be.
It was hard because I felt so different. I felt so disconnected from friends at home and friends at school. I felt like I wasn’t close with anyone because there was something wrong with me. In reality there is nothing wrong with me except the way I treat myself. When I am constantly “joking” and degrading myself it takes a toll on me without me fully understanding it at the time.
It is because of all of this and so much more than I could fit into this blog that my new summer’s resolution is to stop punishing myself for not being the same person I was a year ago, and embrace myself for who I am now.
For anyone else who needs some help learning to love them self here is a video that helps 🙂
Ashleigh Varney 