The Person I Needed

Years ago, I saw a quote on the internet that hit me hard. It wasn't attributed to anyone, though I'm sure many people have said it.

“Be the person you needed when you were growing up.”

I was in middle school when I first came across this idea, and even though it would still be a few years until I learned exactly what it was that I needed, I knew I wanted to live by it. What did that mean? Well, at thirteen it meant imagining myself in the future, ideally having gotten past all of the parts of myself I saw as a hindrance.

I didn't have an action plan, though. I was simply picturing a time where I felt better–mostly about myself. I would be confident, more outgoing, less emotional. I arbitrarily chose my junior year of high school to be the time where everything changed. I would lose weight, get a boyfriend, have awesome friends. And, well…

Junior year was the year my life changed, but not in the ways I had imagined. I did start losing weight, but only because my body was going into panic mode due to my undiagnosed and therefore uncontrolled diabetes. I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and began the uphill battle of unlearning a lot of things I had believed about myself for so long.

For starters, I didn't need to change to be worthy of the things I wanted. Look at me now, still anxious, still shy, and yet I'm healthier and happier than I've ever been in my life. I have amazing friends and have gotten multiples pieces of my writing published. I don't know if I'd say I'm less emotional, but I definitely understand my emotions and feelings now, which I could not say ten years ago.

In this journey of discovering who I am and accepting that person, I finally realized what it was that I needed back then. I needed someone to tell me that I didn't need to change everything about myself. I needed someone to tell me that I wasn't crazy, or too shy, or too emotional. I needed someone to stand in front of me and say that I was enough just as I was.

The adults in my life did not know how to help me when I was little, or as I got older. Mental health was not a conversation that was had by most people in the early 2000s. If people were talking about it, they weren't doing it in my small midwestern hometown.

My support system is incredible now, but it still hurts to think back to the people who, in one way or another, tried to change me. Even going to places I spent most of my childhood at brings resentment. I don't want to be resentful of those places and people, but I've been through enough therapy to know that my feelings are valid, no matter the baggage attached to them.

I think about the little girl I was often. I think about how she stuffed her feelings down to the point of being numb, how she opted to be quiet rather than attempt to tell a story that would be ignored by the people around her. I think about the pain she went through that she didn't deserve.

Most of all, I think of how she would feel knowing that she would share her story in the hopes of making other people feel better.

Everything I write and do is for her, but it's also for anyone else who ever felt excluded or put down because of who they were. I hope you know that you didn't deserve that, and I hope that you have found people who see and appreciate the incredible person you are.

I'm lucky enough to have those people now, and I will forever be grateful to them.

Show your inner child some love today.

–Abbie