All this time

I am sure that from time to time everyone hears a song that really speaks to them. Lyrics they feel they can relate to, however cheesy that might sound. There've been two on my mind recently, though I just want to mention one of them today.

I guess everyone has different complexes and most of them have started somewhere in primary school, as this is the time when the awareness of ourselves and our environment begins. For the first time, it really matters what we wear, whom we befriend, how others see us and if we fit the crowd. I think it's also the time we want to fit in the most, and the feeling continues in junior high school, maybe a bit of high school. But it's in primary school that we get labeled and experience the power of popularity, as well as being laughed at and rejected, if we're the less lucky kind.

The images and ideas we have about ourselves in correlation with others, which have been imprinted on our minds, tend to stay with us for a very long time. They did with me, anyways.

I grew, I developed and I changed, but still whom I mostly saw was a girl who's been laughed at one too many times, who's struggled with the way she looks and behaves, and who's been very low on self-confidence for way longer than she should have.

And then suddenly there comes a day when things really change. Or is it more that we finaly see the change that'd been happening all the time? We realise what's in the past is in the past, and that there's nothing stopping us from what we want here and now. Also, that it's the others who should fit our taste and that we have a say in how our world is constructed. And in a way that's the moment we start our lives anew.

That push can be anything I suppose. From the boyfriend who's our self-esteem booster, to a book that inspires us, to a conversation with a total stranger we have on the bus one day.

At the same time, it is true that we sometimes get to meet some of the people whom we'd let make us miserable, and see them for what they really are. Which is nothing more than human. And honestly, a lot of times less fortunate than ourselves. At least that's the case with me and the mean girls who used to tease and criticize me years ago. They might not be homeless nor surrounded by babies, but I wouldn't want to be in their shoes, not for a day. Even if you paid me really good money.

Why? I might not be writing pop songs, but I am beginning to live my dreams and travel the world.  And I thank those girls 'cause they helped me become who I am today, by showing me whom I never want to be.

When I think how it all came to be, I find no other answer than : " All this time, I've had it in me."