To My Girls Regarding Coolness

Dear Girls,

When I was younger, I was not cool.  I went to a very small school, and by the later years, I didn’t have very many friends.  I don’t really know how it happened.  One year everything seemed normal, and then I went back to school after summer vacation and everything had changed.  Kids started flirting.  They started swearing.  They shaved their legs.  And I was still a kid.  Or so I thought.

After that, things got more difficult.

I grew up in a very loving family.  I was surrounded by love and acceptance and encouragement.  But when I got to school, I started getting different messages.  I wasn’t funny.  I wasn’t likable.  And I surely wasn’t pretty.  My hair was wrong.  My shoes were wrong.  Everything about me just felt… wrong.

I didn’t quite know what to do, so I did the only thing I knew to do.  I pretended like everything was okay.

I kept trying to be friends with kids who didn’t want to be friends with me.  It was the only option because otherwise I would have been friendless.  And that would have meant I was broken.  So it was better to pretend I wasn’t broken than to acknowledge that I was.

Back then, at least where I went to school, bullying wasn’t anything like it is now.  I never felt bullied.  I just felt very unlikeable.  Kids would whisper behind my back; they would giggle while looking at me with their hands covering their mouths.  I was always chosen last, and most of the time I wasn’t chosen.

And this just seemed normal to me.  When I would get the idea to try to befriend someone, I would quickly put myself in my place.  “I’m just not likable,” I would think.  “I don’t deserve to have friends.  I need to know my place.”

And that’s how it went for years.

But all of that doesn’t bother me.   It was a million years ago, and I guess the lens of time has just clarified things for me.  I didn’t fit in.  Worse things have happened.  They were nice girls who were just caught up in the drama of adolescence.

What does bother me, however, is how I reacted to it.

I didn’t tell any grown ups about it.  I didn’t want anyone to know how broken I was.

I didn’t get angry at the girls because I felt I deserved it.

I didn’t stand up for myself because that would mean I was stepping out of line.  Trying to be more than I was.

And what is most surprising to me is the message I chose.  From people who loved me, I got the message that I was good. I was kind and smart and likable.  From those who didn’t like me, I got a much different message.  And there was never a question in my mind of which to choose — I chose the negative.  I chose to believe the worse about myself.

And I, by no means, am alone in this struggle.  I think we all struggle with negative messages, and as the line in my favorite movie (Pretty Woman) goes, “The bad is just easier to believe.”  But for you three, I want more.

Because the thing is that some people won’t like you.  Some people might find you lacking in humor or congeniality or any number of traits.  And that’s fine.  That’s more than fine.  It’s inevitable.  But always remember that people not liking you isn’t about you.  It’s about them.  It’s about their preferences and tastes and desires.  They have every right not to like you, and you have every right not to care.

Slough it off.  Move on.  Go find people who do like you.  But never ever let their opinions of you dictate your own opinions of you.  Ever.

I don’t want you to think you are the most beautiful girl in every room.  I don’t want you to think you are as smart as smart can be.  I don’t want you to think you are the most athletic and graceful and funny and likable.  Because that would require comparisons, and comparisons never serve any of us.

No.  What I want you to believe is that you are smart.  And pretty.  And funny.  And likable.  And perhaps athletic.  You are you, and who you are is good enough.

You are okay.

You are more than okay.  You are perfect even despite your imperfections.  Because you are perfectly you and perfectly who God made you to be.  Never again will a person like you walk the face of this Earth.  You are a grand blessing given to this world just as the person to the right and to the left of you is.  We all have our own gifts and our own blessings, and to hide yours is to deprive the world of the person God created in you.

The world will tell you at every turn that you are not enough.  And to that world, I want you to stand up strong and say, “I am enough.”

Because you are enough.  And to me, you are the world.

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