Growing up, I've realized that the hardest thing I've ever had to be is happy. It's so easy to be unhappy, so easy to fall underneath the crashing waves of loneliness and pessimism. Sometimes you can't even blame others for typing ropes around your legs and pulling you underneath the surf, sometimes you do that to yourself and there's nothing more infuriating than realizing that you can be sabotaging yourself.

That's really what it is at the end of the day: it really isn't a lie when people say that "you are your greatest enemy". It's true; and it's true in so many ways. One example being body shaming: I hear so many girls say such vile things to and about themselves that they would never even dream saying to their friends let alone another person. When we look in the mirror we are our greatest critic, and sure, this is all brought along by societal pressures, but at the end of the day the negating voices that we hear when we go to bed are ours. We are so much better than that, though, as human beings we are magnificent machines of biology--so how did we get to be so dark?

Now that I'm twenty years old I realize what I really want in life is to be happy, to look upon my time line and not see regrets, but see moments in between of happiness that make all the other blemishes worthwhile. So how can we do that? Unfortunately, there's only one way, I believe: admitting that we can be happy. It's a mistake to think that we are not worthy of love, happiness, and all the great things. Saying that we admit it, opens the door to allowing it to happen. Happiness isn't always about buying cars and traveling to amazing places (even though it doesn't hurt), but smiling unequivocally and giving ourselves to our lives because at the end of the day it is ours.

You can have a friendship that ends much like a space ship hits the ground when falling out of orbit: on fire, deadly, and a giant mess. But there are reasons that friendship used to work - moments of happiness, pho for lunch and tea when you're supposed to be on a diet because after all, we're worth it. We create happiness, after all, just the same as we create sadness and everything in between. Nothing is ever easy, but that doesn't mean it isn't possible.