As a teenager, I felt like I was always trying to fit in. I wanted to be the beautiful, slender, popular girl that everyone liked. Instead I was the some what cute, chunky, voted most unique laugh (not because it was cute!) girl that the popular girls picked on. I wasn't great at sports and I felt like I didn't really fit in anywhere in my high school. I hated school even though I had some really great friends and always had a date to the school dances. In order to fit in better, I found myself turning into someone I was not. I would lie or turn on a good friend if I thought it would make me more popular.As I became more desperate to fit in I started smoking and would occasionally go for weeks without eating in order to try and lose weight. I had been a Christian since age 12 but I didn't think my friends would think it was cool so I didn't talk about it much, if at all. I definitely didn't act like a Christian. I picked up swearing because everyone else talked that way, so of course I wanted to as well. I pretty much ignored everything that I knew was right in favor of things that I thought would help me to fit in. But I still felt lost and alone.
Once high school was over, I started trying to fit in with the college crowd. Drugs, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity were now on my list of things to do to fit in. Smoking and crude language were now such a part of my character that I felt like they had always been there. I did not look like the person on the outside that I knew I wanted to be, but I still so desperately wanted to be cool and fit it. Eventually, I found myself in an abusive marriage that lasted 10 months and left me with a very dim outlook on myself and some really bad habits to try to break.
Lying to fit in or to keep from hurting some one's feelings are the hardest habits I have to break, and I am still working on it. If I had to go back in time and tell my teenage self one thing it would be this: Your free to be you! All those people that I tried so hard to impress are not a part of my life now, but the habits are still there. All of those things that I did to try to fit in caused so many bad memories and habits that I wish I had just been myself. There is a great song out there by Francesca Battistelli called "Free to be Me" and it speaks so much to my teenage self that I wish I had heard this song 15 years ago. Check it out if you have never heard it. Even though most of us are not teenagers anymore, that doesn't mean that we can't change. God is greater than any habit we may have!
