At the beginning of this year, I had a plan -- a plan to start new, to recreate myself. The problem with recreating yourself is that you are creating a person who isn’t you. There is nothing wrong with changing and growing up, but there is a difference between growing and turning yourself into someone you’re not. When you grow up, you adapt and learn a lot about yourself, and you use what you learned to become a better person. But when you recreate yourself, you make yourself into someone you’re not, and you often forget about the lessons you have learned along the way.

It all started at the beginning of my freshman year of college. I went to an extremely small high school, where everyone knew everything about everyone. So the idea that I could start over overwhelmed me with excitement. I basically made a list of things I wanted people to see me as: calm, confident, graceful, and unaffected by others' opinions of me. But in reality, I am none of these things. I’m hyper, and awkward, and not always sure of myself. I thought that by pretending to be this person I wasn’t, that eventually I would just magically turn into this person I wanted to be so badly. But I didn’t. Instead, my friends could see through this persona I created. My perfectly sculpted personality started to crack.

I was so tired of trying to be this person that I so obviously wasn’t. I gave up, I wasn’t sure who I was, I was so terrified that my friends wouldn’t like the real me. I felt like I was floating, not sure of who I was. I would just agree with whatever anyone said and did, if I didn’t know who I was, at least I could have a place in a group. The thing about friendship, though, is that it works because everyone is different and brings a different perspective. If all friends were just the same, it would be pretty boring.

One day, with a little help from my friends, this persona, this protective armor I wore, finally shattered. At the time, I didn’t know how to react; I was sad and scared. But with some time and a lot of reflecting, I realized that is exactly what needed to happen. My fake persona was finally shattered, and underneath was a girl who knew she wasn’t perfect and had things she needed to work on, but she was herself. I am slowly realizing who I am again, and this experience has made me grow and learn things I never knew about myself.

For example, I really dislike creepy movies that make you think so hard you just end up confusing yourself and never truly understanding them -- and even though my friends like those movies, I don’t have to pretend to like them. We can still be friends, even though we have different opinions.

At the beginning of this year, I was so focused on all of the things I disliked about myself that I forgot about the things that make me me. I am honest, brave, fiercely loyal to the people I care about, compassionate, and sometimes I can be funny. This whole experience has taught me that liking yourself is way more important than trying to get others to like you. You are the only person who you need to impress at the end of the day, because it’s what we think of ourselves that truly matters.