With only 10 days left until my first big move away from home, I’ve started to question how I want to approach this next chapter of life. Although the thought of being in an entirely new environment alone is much more exciting than anxiety-inducing to me, doubts have still been creeping into my mind about how much I’ll be a fit for my new home and how conducive my old life in Atlanta will be to me whenever I come back. This fear of feeling like I won’t quite belong anywhere has caused me to lean on my younger self for help, and it’s come in the form of re-reading the letter I wrote to Georgia Tech’s chapter of If You’re Reading This. Right now a lot of us could be in a chapter in life that’s causing us to re-evaluate our identities, and in case you’re in a similar situation like me, here’s a little reminder from the 2021 version of myself that it’s okay to feel like an outcast because simply being yourself is your biggest strength.

For years, I thought there was something wrong with me for never really finding people who wanted to stick around. It wasn’t until I stepped back from this pattern that I realized the real issue stemmed from the mentality I had toward myself. I saw myself as an extension of what I perceived others thought about me, rather than who I knew myself to be outside of any external influences. A hard question I had to ask myself was, if you spend your life trying to meet standards that will never be fulfilled and aren’t even your own in the first place, then have you really lived?

Something that compelled me to walk away from the belief that I needed to please others to be liked is the realization that you are the only consistent person in your life. You know more about what you want, what you need, your standards, dreams, habits, and quirks than anyone else on this planet ever will. So, I used this truth to strengthen my sense of self to the point where I no longer felt the need to look to others for how to act or be or to even validate that I was doing something right.

Feeling comfortable within my own skin around other people hasn’t come easily and is still something I’m working on healing. What I’ve come to know through this journey is that people will try to define you your entire life. Regardless if that’s done in a positive or negative light, you are the only person with the power to choose whether or not you will let those assumptions affect you. You are not what people say you are or how they treat you, but rather who you know yourself to be. You are completely in control of your narrative.

After learning to prioritize my own well-being, my life has shifted in ways I couldn’t even imagine were possible a few years ago. A rock-solid relationship with my family, friends who feel like family, and an appreciation of myself that is worlds better than what I thought others would be able to give me. The most ironic thing about all of the tears I spent on not being invited to something, hearing something someone said in the hallway, and feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere is that I didn’t have to go through it alone because I was there all along.

Self-love is a complex concept because it’s so individualized, but working towards building it doesn’t have to be daunting – you can start small. I found that questioning times when I did what I thought I ‘should’ be doing was beneficial in uncovering unconscious patterns that didn’t come from my own expectations or plans. As silly as this sounds, something I stopped doing when I first started listening to that inner voice was sending my friends pictures of what I was wearing. A tiny step into the unknown by doing things differently is scary at first but will provide you with enough momentum to build off of for the future.

It’s not guaranteed that you will be accepted in every environment, but once you find self-love, that becomes irrelevant. I came across a TedTalk during quarantine about a study conducted by Dr. Ali Binazir on the odds of being born. In said study, Dr. Binazir calculated that the chance each one of us is alive – considering factors like our ancestors meeting, having our particular genetic makeup, and so on – is one in 400 trillion. Your existence isn’t a coincidence, nor is it meaningless in the grand scheme of things. You matter and deserve to be seen, and I’ve come to realize that the most fulfilling place to find this is within yourself.

💘 Hanna