Sometimes we try so hard not to mess up. We do everything in our power to do everything right. But sometimes we get so focused on not tripping that we end up running into a tree branch instead. I know that many of you are trying to figure out what that means in a figurative sense, but this literally happened to me when I lived in New York.

Anyone who knows me can attest to my inability to be normal. I am awkward, I trip on myself, I forget proper English, and I have a cat. You will probably find me 99 percent of the time watching a TV show, reading, researching stuff about criminals, or drinking coffee. None of my awkwardness left when I moved to New York for my freshman year of college. I was still awkward. I still tripped on myself. I still could not use proper English at times. The only thing that was different was that I did not have a cat of my own at the time. But that’s beside the point. The point is, I’ve always been this way. I used to be really embarrassed by how awkward I am, but a specific moment during my freshman year of college changed all of that.

I hit a tree.

No, I did not hit the tree with a car, nor did I hit it with a bike either. I hit the tree while walking with my own two feet. This accident occurred due to my bright idea to take a short cut to my dorm room. The predicament I found myself in, however, was that I was trying to walk over uneven ground and I am known for falling. So I took extra precautions and kept my eyes glued to my feet. Unfortunately, I failed to calculate my height with the height of the branches that hung from the trees I was passing under. Due to this unfortunate mistake, I found my head colliding with a rather hostile tree branch. I was stunned. I backed up, I looked around, I saw people looking at me, and I kept walking as if I had not just humiliated myself in the most pathetic way possible. It was that moment that my inability to be normal fully hit me. If it were any other awkward moment then I would have hidden in my room, mortified. Instead, I ended up closing my dorm door and laughing at myself.

I have watched so many people, myself included, become obsessed with not tripping. We become obsessed with looking down, making sure we don’t mess up, making sure we don’t humiliate ourselves. But that’s what gets us. Because we fail to understand that it’s not the end of the world when we humiliate ourselves. I know that when we’re in middle school and high school we tell ourselves again and again that we can’t screw up. Then when we do screw up, we can’t move past it. We want to hide in our rooms until the day we die because people will forever remember us as the mistake that we made. But you know what? We all mess up. We all do awkward things. We are awkward people. As one of the finest people I know once said (yes, Madeline, I am quoting you), “Embrace the awkward.” You can not stare at your feet and neglect what is above. You have to look straight ahead, and take the tumbles and bumps as they come because we’re awkward people. But that doesn’t mean we have to be sad people too.

If you ever find yourself in my predicament, as I am sure you will, please remember to take it lightly. Things get rough. We get uncomfortably weird. We run into trees because we stare at our feet and forget to look at our surroundings. That is life. But the best part of life is that we get to choose how we are going to take these tumbles and bumps. We can hide beneath the blankets until we die, or we can laugh about it and embrace our awkwardness.

Have you ever heard the phrase, “It’s only awkward if you make it awkward”? Well, awkward is only bad if you make it bad. When I began embracing my awkwardness, I realized that I had hundreds of hilarious stories that I could share with people. Stories that I believed would genuinely make them laugh. However, before my incident with the tree, I truly believed that my stories would scare people off. Now I actually think that my awkwardness is what keeps them around. I hope, for the sake of your own happiness, that you will learn to embrace your awkwardness. Life is too short, and you are too valuable, to allow a tumble or bump stop you from being the downright incredibly awesome and awkward person that you are.