Honey, shave your legs… Or don’t.

We have all been there, we know the drill, I despise shaving my legs. I hate the amount of time it takes due to my long ass legs, I find that even within my 27 years of life, I still find that I cut myself at least one time a month with the new razor. The process is exhausting and annoying and why does hair have to grow on our legs anyways? We go to the store, get the shaving cream, have to allocate time within our morning routine to shave our damn legs.

But why? What for? I went to a birthday party the other day with hopes of seeing a guy that I have a school girl crush on. I shaved my legs. He wasn’t there and I took time out of my busy day and schedule to shave my legs and he wasn’t even there. I got my hopes up and took the effort to do one more step in the shower with hopes that maybe he would potentially notice that I shaved my legs. I left the party annoyed that I did something for a man and he did not see. I started to think about the things that I have been doing to impress other people when instead, I should be shaving my legs and doing specific details only for myself.

On a whim, I decided to write this blog. I cannot tell you the amount of times when I have started a blog and wrote an article of something that I was never going to publish, something I was never going to let anyone see, or something on a piece of paper in a random notebook that eventually got thrown away. But today, I woke up differently, I woke up with the desire to make sure that the things that I have done that I consider personal mistakes to enlighten those around me so that they do not have to go through the same shit that I have.

I sat here writing this and thinking about all the times I have done something to get the attention of others. I know that there are times when I have overdone my weight loss, I have done my make up a certain way, I have shaved my legs for someone else. Why is it that I (we) feel the need to do things for other people when in reality we should be doing all of this for the person that actually matters, us. This morning I got up and I did not shave my legs, I wore a dress and was able to look at my legs and not care about the amount of hair that I have on them. I decided that from this moment on, I am doing everything for me.

In life we are programed to want to spend the rest of our life with someone and to find that companion that is going to make the world around us a better place. I want the person that is going to love me when I am all dressed up and a full face of make up and a guy that is going to feel the same way about me when I first wake up and I have dragon breath. Relationships should not always be about impressing the one that we are with but the person that we are destined to be with, our person, is supposed to love us regardless of appearance, weight, or anything.

What I really want to know is how long have I been doing everything for other people? How long have I been shaving my legs in hopes that it is going to impress someone. I look at my parents and the relationship that they have. They have been married for 25 years and my mother shaves her legs everyday. When I ask her about this, she says she does it for her because it bothers her when they are prickly. She doesn’t do it for my father, she does it for herself. That is the kind of way that I want to live. I want to do things because I want to do them for myself.

I am not perfect, I have never claimed to be perfect. I have been given one hell of the last few years. I notice that the trend of my failed relationships and my failed attempts to be independent is that I have the desire to please the people around me. I see the good in them and force myself to look past all of the red flags and just continue down the path to me wanting be in a relationship rather than me being in a HEALTHY relationship. I have seen the darkest parts of people and I have continued to want to love them because I felt that I was nothing more that what they had to offer me. I was the person that they wanted me to be because I was unsure of the person who I actually was.

I am stubborn, I am funny, I am someone who desires to have control of situations. I have a fear of change and I am often considered a people pleaser. I am a friend, a sister, a person. I am dedicated and hard working. I love communication and learning about people. I love being in the city and taking time to sit in the country on the weekends. I wear heels and boots in the same weekend and I am very transient. I make rash decisions and often regret them later, I am emotional and I have a difficult time with confrontation. I have hidden parts of me from the world because that is the way that my relationship had conditioned me to be. I lost sight of who I was and started doing things for other people rather than doing the things that make me unique.

I have broken down in ways that I could never imagine, I have loved those that did not love the person that I was, but instead they morphed me into someone that at the end of the relationship, I did not know who that person was. I want to be able to show the world that I am here, I am exactly who I want to be and that despite the ideas and the view of everyone else, I am going to continue to be the person I am, regardless.

Throughout my journey with finding my journey with my self-worth, I have had to learn what makes me happy and what routine and traditions I need to put into place for myself to create that stability and that I needed to feel fulfilled in my life. I started to take control of my mental health and focusing on the signs of a breakdown, I got a new journal that has entries from everyday, I have found a new hobby with working out, and have continued to challenge myself into doing something new every month that scares me.

I have been surrounded by fantastic friends that have supported me, encouraged me and have watched me fall a million times. But the greatest compliment is one that shows that the hard work that I have been putting into my life, is paying off. I encourage the people who read this to find who you are, it takes time, its terrifying but at the same time, I would rather be sure in myself rathe than having a void that I have been attempting to fill with people who do not benefit my life. Doing something that scares me is the most adventurist thing that I could do in my life, I am not someone that goes out on a whim and does something that makes me uncomfortable. I stay within my safe zone and know that within that bubble, no harm can come to me. But its time for me, and you, to leave that zone and do something that makes us scared, go for a run, jump off a bridge, or simply tell someone how you feel. This has been my biggest challenge yet, but its working.

I started this blog with hopes that I am not the only one who has been through this. I know that I am not the only one who has forgotten who I am and has shoved that under the rug to pretend to be someone I am not. I have started this blog as a dedication to myself and the people in my life who love and cherish me for the person that I am and not the person that other people want me to be. So with that being said, here is my vow to you as my readers. I vow to be open and honest. I vow to be transparent and allow for my colors to be shown. I vow to go on a journey with you all into finding out who we are, learning how to be better and to prove to the world that we can do everything for ourselves because that is the best thing we could do. So tonight, as I get in the shower, I am going to take a few extra minutes to shave my legs, for me.

#womanempowerment #blogging #findingthewildflower #shaveyourlegs #ordont #bebetterthanwhattheytellyou