A nose ring, a tattoo and boots. These three things may seem like they have no relation to one another, but they mean a lot to me. It may seem silly and some people may read this and think it's weird such random things could matter so much, but they do. I have reached a new place in my life, after a lot of hard work and counseling (you can read more about that here), where I truly am okay with who I am. I can say I am who I am and I know that I am enough, there's nothing I can say or do or any level of perfection I can achieve that will make me more valuable. Through this process, I've realized how often in my life I've made decisions based on what other people said, their opinions or how I thought they would react to something. I am such a people pleaser, that I would let others thoughts dictate my choices. (I like to think I'm a recovering people pleaser...it's still a process!) So I was thinking back to moments in my life where I've felt like I haven't done that and three symbols jumped out at me. My nose ring, my tattoo and some boots.
When I got my nose pierced, it was, honestly, the first time I can remember making a decision to do something that I purely just wanted to do, knowing that other people didn't approve or thought it was dumb or may look at it and think it looks bad. I didn't care, it was something I had wanted for awhile, so I did it. The same with my tattoo. It was something I had thought about, that meant a lot to me and that I really wanted regardless of what others views on it would be. Now the boots, weird right? I feel silly even exposing this to the world, but when I saw these boots in the store, I loved them and I had really been wanting a pair like them, but I almost didn't buy them. I felt like they didn't "fit" who I was, that I would be deviating from who I was wearing this pair of shoes that didn't seem to "reflect" me. I know, dumb.
In all these instances, it was all about what other people thought and how I would be perceived, or rather, how I thought other people would perceive me. I'm annoyed that it's taken me this long to figure this all out. Why did I spend so much of my life and so much of my time worried about what other people thought? Why did I spend so much of my time letting my choices be dictated by others opinions, like a puppet on a string sometimes. I was scared to go with what I wanted because of how I would be perceived, that I wouldn't be good enough or liked enough anymore, that I wouldn't fit into a mold that I thought people put me in. It's so messed up and I have experienced so much freedom from realizing that I don't have to worry about what others are thinking. I know who I am, that I really shouldn't think so highly of myself that everyone even notices what kind of shoes I'm wearing and that it's so okay to make decisions for my life...because it's my life.
As silly as it may be, I'm thankful for my little nose ring, my tattoo and these boots. They're all reminders to stay true to who I am, that my goal in life is to not keep everyone around me happy and to fit into a box that I or others have put me in, but to know I am who I am and that is enough.