Maggie C.

Photography by LeighAnn Henderson

If you’re reading this, you are exactly who you are supposed to be.

Being yourself. How ironic that a two-word piece of advice could be anything but simple to follow?

Being myself was the first lesson I remember my parents teaching me as a child - at the time, I took the advice for granted. I could not understand why such a small lesson could be so important. 22 years later, I understand the inevitable truth: Being yourself is hard. Honestly, I wish my parents had told me that finding yourself would be even harder. Especially when we live in a generation that is obsessed with finding the faults of everyone. The type of generation that will call you fake if you make a change about yourself, even if this change is mirroring your raw identity. The type of generation that convinces you that you aren’t doing college the right way if you aren’t going out every weekend. The type of generation that makes you feel so lonely that you will change for anyone just to feel like you fit in.

Individual identity has become backwards; because it is so often controlled by other people. This being said, in order to find myself, I had to step back and ask myself the question, “What would I do if there was no audience in my life? If there was no one to compare experiences or personality traits to?” From my experience - the only way to find your individual identity is to see yourself as just that: an individual. One person. Not yourself plus your parents, not yourself plus your friends or peers. Just yourself. This single realization allowed me to decipher who I wanted to be, and filter away the traits of the person that everyone else wanted me to be.

Finding myself slowly over time felt like such a victory. But it is important to note that before I found myself, I lost myself first. I lost myself to the hours in the library trying to convince my professors that I was smart enough, to the friends I walked on eggshells around just because I wanted them to like me so badly, to the “put-together” southern families that made me ashamed of my anything but “put together” family, even to the irrelevant nights of partying where Snapchat memories made it look like I was on top of the world. Losing myself in those moments was devastating, but I can only trust that it was instrumental in helping me understand that I was so much more than the calculated, poised person that I was disguising myself as.

There is undoubtedly something so special about finding who you are, But, then comes another really hard reality. Even after finding yourself, people are still going to misunderstand you. They might even only remember you for the seasons in which you lost yourself. Furthermore, you could be completely transparent about who you are, and people will still make up rumors, assumptions, and lies about your actions. You could wake up one day feeling so content with who you are, and end the day feeling ashamed about every aspect of yourself because one person shut you down. When these defeating days break me down, I have to accept that no matter how hard I try, being myself will always be a battle.

If this is a type of battle that you are fighting, I wish I had an answer for you to make this challenge easier. However, no answers compare to the promises that I have trusted through these kinds of trials, and I hope they bring comfort to you as well.

I promise you that the people who love you in your life are going to love you at your best and at your worst.

I promise you that you will find joy in making the ones you care about feel loved exactly the way they are.

I promise you that there is no shame in where you’ve come from because it has made you who you are today.

I promise you that there will be chains in your life if you continue to live according to a certain standard, especially on top of the continuous judgment around you.

And here is my favorite promise. I promise you that there will be overflowing freedom in your life if you begin to live just the way you were made to be. And if my opinion matters at all, I think that version of you is pretty close to perfect.

So, if you’ve read this far, take courage in being yourself, take time to find yourself, and take heart in loving others so that they can love themselves too.

Maggie C., Clemson University

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