When I see or hear rain, it brings an infinite level of joy to me. It reminds me of natural beauty and all that is around us. We often get too stuck in what is happening in our own lives that we don’t take a second and consider all the good around us. That is what I have been trying to discover for as long as I can remember. Where is all the good around me and how can I find it?

Growing up can be hard. We know that because when we were young all we wanted to do was grow up and now that we have grown up all we want is to be little again. I know I personally want to be young again. I want that innocence that is in children. I want to take out all the bad things that have happened from my memory and still have innocence within me. But the reality is, that it is virtually impossible because if we were to take all the bad memories out of our minds then all the good memories would also be gone. The good always outweighs the bad. That is what we have to keep reminding ourselves.

But where is the good around ME? That is what I have been looking for and finally I think I know how to find it and I want to share it with you. I have never put this in to writing and quite honestly it is scary to type it out right now.

Growing up I was always the ugly duckling. I know cliché. But the reality is that it exists. When you are born in to a family that holds beauty in every direction you look in you start to look for new family. I finally found my second family when I was in the seventh grade. There were seven of us total. We were by no means perfect; I mean we were 13 years old. But when I started looking around me I quickly became that ugly duckling again. They would remind me that I was over weight and that I got acne before all of them, and of course in the 7th grade I was right in the middle of my braces phase. But that’s who I was.

At home I was dealing with far more than someone my age normally has to coup with. You see I am the youngest of 7 kids and being born in to a melting pot family nothing is ever picture-perfect. But that is one thing I look back and am so thankful my parents never kept from me is that life happens and no one is perfect but it is about how much love you share together to move forward. My brother a recovering drug addict and my sister overcoming an eating disorder. I just didn’t quite know where to turn anymore. There was one more thing I was holding resentment over. The fact that I was born in to a family with money and here I am today at 21, and it is still something I often reject in my life because it has caused me so much pain and way to many tears. Money does not buy happiness. Let me remind you of that. Often people think it does.

With all of these elements I have always been searching for what makes me happy. And you should find your happiness in your OWN life because everyone’s is different.

Well to go on about this crazy pattern in my life of finding happiness and then losing it all. I found my inner balance to be able to deal with everything around me. I knew who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. As I grew up every summer in Mexico City with my family it taught me so much about life. The Hispanic culture is warm and loving and caring, the one thing I was lacking in my average American life in Washington. I treasured what Mexico meant to me in my everyday life. In 8th grade I had lost the person that had meant hope to me. I still remember calling my family in Mexico to talk to them and I still replay that phone conversation over and over and over in my head. It was the first time I had experienced death. I mean everything else had seemed to be experienced in my life and then this. It just topped it all off and I had in a way lost the faith and balance I had held that it was all going to start to get better, I felt I was back at square one.

Everyone anticipates high school but in reality my life in high school felt short because everything in high school ended some how, which also means those I treasured as my second family, had come and gone. I was still the ugly duckling and honestly I had gotten to the point of not caring anymore. I had my mom and my dad, all I needed in my life to be successful. Thankfully high school was like a blink of an eye and I finally got to decide where to go to college. Gonzaga University was by no means my first pick at all, but I knew I would most likely get in so I applied as my safety school. But some how, I came on GEL weekend where all incoming freshman come to see campus, I wasn’t participating in GEL weekend, my dad and I just came through passing and some how it felt like home. I was hesitant to commit to Gonzaga because it meant that I would go to school for the next four years with the same people that had hurt me. But college is bigger and the likelihood of me seeing them was low. I was placed my freshman year in an all girls dorm that had 40 of us and if you knew me you knew that I just did not get along with other girls.

But hey, it was time for a change and we would see how it would go. Freshman year was fun, crazy, wild, filled with many regrets. I had finally found that family I had been searching for. They say the friends you make in college are your friends for life and I would completely agree. They accepted me. For the first time in a long time I felt accepted. My mom was really sick my freshman year and the girls always reminded me it was going to be okay. It was love you could say, we all had our own things going on and we all supported each other. Four year later, we still live together. So let me tell you treasure the people who love you for you.

Finally, money wasn’t a thing, looks were not the main factor for picking a friend, and fun was what we always found ourselves having. So my family is amazing and my friends are indescribably amazing. But, I felt myself still feeling like something was missing which meant I couldn’t seem to find happiness or the good around me. I am 21 years old, and I have never had a boyfriend, I have never been on a date, and I have never had a guy tell me I am beautiful (Except my dad because he will always be my best friend and my Prince Charming). That is what was missing. So to me my life was not complete and I could only see that and not all the good around me; I simply focused on what was missing. I threw myself a pity party and pushed people away. Then that hope I had lost in eighth grade just kept flashing back over and over again in my mind. Until, this last summer when my aunt came to stay with my family for a month and a half and slowly it all started to make sense. She told me about how our family that is predominately women is just to comfortable being independent and alone. It all made sense.

I wasn’t worried about being alone anymore because I finally found someone that I didn’t want to be too independent around and I felt liked me for me. Well that’s what I thought, right? It just seems like right when I start to think it is all going up hill, its like a big gust of wind comes and pushes me down. Well this person that I thought was going to be my person. May actually have been the worst. I realized all my insecurities had come alive again. On top of all of it I had just started taking a medication so I looked like I was going through puberty again and I had gained weight from it. So there I was the ugly duckling once again, acne, fat, but my teeth are still perfect don’t worry! And I started this school year feeling very unimportant and that has been hard. I have had to remember all the bad memories to find out how to move forward.

Where do I find the good? Where do I find my own happiness?

And that is how I finally discovered where happiness is in our lives:

The good is in everyday. The good is in the people around me. The good is in the people that love me. The good is in fashion. The good is in cooking. The good is everywhere in the world. The good is real and imaginary. That is what I have found. I love fashion, and that is just who I am. Even though you may see me around campus in leggings and a sweatshirt, I admire everything about fashion. I love to cook, it makes my heart feel all warm and fuzzy when I see people eating something I cooked, that is the good. The good is everywhere in the world and I have put together all the places I want to go and see; my first place is China, so I can go cuddle Panda Bears. The good is real like the friends I live with that I know will always be there. The good is imaginary like the lost souls that now protect us everyday. The good is waking up in the fall and seeing the leaves change colors and the rain fall. And most of all the good is within ME. I know what makes me happy like a vodka tonic or watching "The Italian Job" on a Saturday by your self at 11:00pm at night.

But the biggest thing to remember when looking for the good is that the bad completes the good. Without everything in my past I would never be able to see all the good around me. Keep those memories that hurt and use them for something powerful. So here I am, a senior at Gonzaga University, 21 years old, drinking coffee, thinking about fashion, still don’t have a perfect body, and my acne is still there. But I have found my happiness. I will hold all the bad memories close to me and move to the future. I still have a whole life ahead of me to get that perfect body, clear my acne, become a lawyer, travel the world, and maybe find someone to love.

So until you find the good around you just look outside watch the rainfall and appreciate the natural beauty around us.