On the eve of my twentieth birthday before I fell asleep, I took
some time to reflect on my teenage years and although there were some major
cringe-worthy memories I was actually sort of impressed with myself. In the past three years especially I’ve done
things that really made me feel like a human.
As a woman it is easy to sometimes feel limited in your
decisions and actions, but when you go against the grain it feels so good. These are some things that I really feel that
every single woman should do ASAP.
1)
Cut
your hair off. All of
it. I can tell you, from experience;
there is nothing quite like coming home from the salon with the back of your
head buzzed. It was one of the scariest
decisions I’ve made. There were multiple
instances where people thought I was a boy and many more where I felt ugly and
spent a half hour crying. I thought I needed to compensate. I thought, since I have a boy haircut I need
to stop biting my nails so they look more feminine. Or I should wear makeup and
dresses now so people don’t call me a boy.
I did all that for a little while until I got sick of it. I learned to be way more comfortable with
myself and my body. I stopped being upset about what people thought because at
the end of the day, it wasn’t their life, it was mine and I wasn’t going to let
them ruin a single day of it. I didn’t
hide behind my hair. It was so freeing. I can truthfully say it took away an body
images I’ve struggled with.
2)
Get
muddy. Along with my short hair, I started acting a little less
conservatively. In some ways I guess I was
motivated by the fact that I could emulate a man, I did something that was new
to me. I started hiking. And in no way is that a man’s activity, I always
never thought I should do it. My
favorite things about hiking are the moments when I am afraid I might get
hurt. One particular moment I love the
most happened while I was trekking up the side of a creek. It was fairly steep and icy. I was using tree branches to help me not to
tumble to my imminent doom. There was a
moment when I slipped and I thought I was going to fall, then my foot slide and
caught on a tree root and my ankle twisted. My palm got scraped by the branch I
was holding on to and my heart was in my throat. Things like that don’t happen
every day and I think that women are sometimes too afraid of getting hurt so
they don’t push themselves. Just the feeling of knowing I was strong enough to
keep going after the thing I was afraid of happened, it gave me a thrill. I would definitely twist my ankle again for
more moments like that.
3)
Be
weird. I am naturally
wacky, so this was easier for me. I am a
big proponent for seeing how strange you can be until you embarrass yourself. Recently I was in my car and an awesome song
came on and I thought to myself, man this
song is so good I want to scream, (you
know that really fun yell/scream people do in movies in convertibles?). Well, I went to yell but I hesitated and went
silent. It was almost too embarrassing to
do in a car by myself in traffic headed to work. I have moments like this where I will be
singing my lungs out to Christina Aguilera then stop because I don’t want
myself to notice I’m enjoying being an idiot.
I have found the best way to counter your filter is to be even
weirder. I make chicken noises, do
interpretive dances, and make goofy faces to myself. I think weirdness is essential to being
happy.
A lot of what I just talked about really boils down to going
outside your comfort zone, so if I were to give one bit of advice to women and
girls who are unhappy it would be to go so far out of your comfort zone that
you build an immunity to it. That’s when
you begin to feel special.
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