For years, I've been stuck feeling guilty for loving who I am. If I didn't want to change something about myself, then I must've thought I was perfect, right? We live in a society that forces us to believe that if we don't crave perfectionism, then something must be wrong with us.

But to be perfect, that means that we're lacking in some area, or we are not good enough at something. We can be better. We can do better.

I linked "needing to change" with the longing desire to be viewed a certain way by everyone around me, instead of how I want to be perceived.

I struggled for a long time to love who I was, I felt like how I looked on the outside didn't fully embody how I felt on the inside. Which lead to more issues, no self-confidence, and becoming extremely insecure. Everything I did wasn't enough. I never felt pretty enough, smart enough, for anyone or anything.

After seven agonizing years of falling short of my fabricated expectations, I was done feeling helpless in owning who I was.

I finally realized that I could love myself, deeply and wholely, and still want to be able to better myself in certain areas.

I know some days I eat too little or too much. Sometimes (okay, frequently), I snap on people who want the best for me. I seriously struggle with studying, and school work never came easily to me. I know there are areas of my life I want to improve in, and that's more than okay.

With growing up comes immense responsibility to own up to your actions. To know if there's something you want to change about yourself, you can. You don't have to conform to what society tells you you need to do in order to be perfect.

You get to decide what your version of perfectly imperfect means to you.