My family and I have been watching home videos we haven’t seen in years.

It’s been fun and at times, bittersweet, to walk down memory lane and see all my loved ones who died, or see myself laughing with people I’m not in contact with anymore.

But something that has resonated with me since watching these VHS tapes, is how much I LIKE the teenage girl I was, which is ironic because I HATED her back then.

Maybe hate is a strong word. I didn’t hate myself as a whole, but the sum of my parts did not equal 100% in my mind.

Most of the videos are from my 17th birthday in 1993 and on.

I hated my nose. It’s crooked from sucking my thumb with my index finger hooked over it for the first quarter of my life.

Once my cousin stood under it and asked, “Why does your nose go like this (while making a zig zag motion with his finger)?

I would say he was just being a precocious young lad asking an innocent question, but it was around the same time he was featured in a video mooning the camera 4 times and almost flashing his dicky-bird until his sister tackled him to the ground 🤣 Don’t feel too sorry for me, we tortured my cousin as a kid – he took it in stride and he’s still the best ♥️ (and my nose – still crooked – doesn’t bother me anymore.)

I hated my body. I embraced the Courtney Love-esque babydoll dresses and huge clothes because I wanted to hide how fat I was. My weight did fluctuate in the span of these videos but I was not fat in any of them.

I usually hated my overall look and would spend hours staring in the mirror, trying to figure out ways to be prettier.

At Pa’s 50th birthday party, I looked healthy with natural dark brown hair and full eyebrows. Three months later at my parents’ 25th anniversary party, I had plucked my eyebrows out and cut and lightened my hair in an effort to look like Drew Barrymore.

It did not work.

I’m actually really mad at myself for doing that because trying to “fix” yourself by copying someone else is always a terrible idea.

And it was BAD. My whole family kept screaming, “WHERE ARE YOUR EYEBROWS???!!!” PJ made up for it later by informing me that even with no eyebrows I was still cute 🥰

I hated how insecure I always felt. Right up until watching these videos, I had a very different mental image of myself from back then.

Yes, I’m correct in recalling the insecurity, but it was surprising to see the way I talked, and moved, and laughed, and danced, and sang. If I was insecure, and I know I was, I didn’t act that way.

I thought I’d be mortified to see myself in these videos, but it was really cathartic to find out that I actually like who I was and I need to erase the bad mental images from my mind.

You’d think that being as old as I am, I wouldn’t still have resonating negative thoughts from my teenage years. But I do. You probably have some of your own too. Stop it now. Everything you’re remembering is way worse in your head than the reality of it all. Let it go and just love yourself NOW. Anything else is just a waste of precious time ♥️