Reflection

Dramatically long story time in three… two… one…

One day I found a note in my locker. It was a small piece of notebook paper and it said kill yourself… My locker was right next to my math teachers classroom and I ran to her room and immediately began crying so the kids in the hall wouldn’t see me.

I owned a black pair of sandals. I can’t remember what brand they were but my mom had bought them for me from Nordstrom. I wore them to school as they were one of the very few things brand named that I owned at the time. A girl who was popular at school ended up wearing the same shoes that day. I tried to talk to her about how we had the same sandals on because I was excited, I felt cool. She looked at me and she said, “oh yeah” and gave her friend a look of mockery and turned back around in her seat.

I was sitting at the lunch table away from the group of girls who’d bullied me all year. My guy friend, Jordan, who was popular in the school, convinced me to sit with him just that once. I had my long hair tied up in a high sloppy bun. I wore my hair that way almost every day. I guess those girls thought it would be funny to mock me so when I sat there, they all put their hair up in a bun just like mine and were laughing. I still to this day don’t know why that was funny to them, let alone why it hurt me so much.

So I transferred schools.

My friend at the time (at my new school) was friends with someone who thought I was ugly. I didn’t know this girl who thought so low of me, in fact I’ve never met her in person. But she hated me for some reason and when I blocked her on Instagram she took her hatred of me to Twitter. She tweeted, “lol fire crotch c*nt”. She was mad that I blocked her and I guess my red hair offended her. That was three years ago and I still remember it vividly. Those four meaningless words hurt me so badly, coming from a girl I’d never even met, that I wanted to kill myself right then and there after reading that. Thank God and thank my mothers advice that I deleted social media for a bit instead.

Then I caught on fire from the waist down because somehow that was a thing that happened in my life.

I had an overwhelming amount of support from friends who I didn’t quite know cared about me as much as they did. While I was on bedrest the people that did come to see me weren’t people from my school who I considered close friends of mine, they were mainly family friends or the few close friends I’d held onto over the years.

It was time for me to go back to school, on crutches and wrapped in gauze from the waist down. I went back to school and walked in on people talking about how I thought I was cool because I posted on social media about my scars. That I was using the situation to my advantage for attention…

They weren’t wrong. Yes, being in a bed all day long and being unable to go to the bathroom without my mother and father carrying me and holding me over the toilet, having to only wash my face and dry shampoo my hair, and wearing dresses without undies because my third degree burns were up to my private parts… I craved attention. I craved having someone to talk to. Someone who wasn’t feeling so sorry for me or looking at me like I’m a freak. So I went to social media to get that attention, I acted like everything was fine, and I smiled in every photo even though I cried at least once a day.

Going back to school after experiencing that, to be looked at like I was crazy… Well I went crazy. I lost a lot of my friends, almost all of my friends.

I know for a hard fact that if I didn’t have the loving, supportive family that I have, I would not be here today. All because I let a few pretty girls hurt my feelings.

Throughout all of this, I’ve been extremely privileged. I live in a nice home with a loving family. I have so much to be grateful for yet I still felt so helpless.

Was a lot of this depression due to my insecurity or due to the people I allowed to hurt me?

I still don’t know.

I’m now confident enough in myself to know how silly it was that I took the harsh opinions of those teenagers into consideration to the extent that I did. However when you’re feeling that insecure, that isolated, and that hated, those few teenagers feel like the Universe. No matter how small humans are, their impact is large.

I think the point of me telling this small portion of my experience is in hopes that someone in high school will read it and have a realization small enough to get them through the night. So…

Dear high school student if you’re reading this, no one is mean to you because they genuinely hate you. They’re mean to you because you’re an easy target. So pretend like you’re strong. Their harshness is a direct reflection of their own being. Teenagers are all lost and confused and unaware of who they are as people. Don’t think for ten seconds that you deserve what has come your way, don’t believe that anything degrading anyone says to you is of worth. No matter how alone you feel, there is at least one single person who loves you and cares about you. Oh, and if you think that you look good wearing two different colored shoes to school, you do. And the people who made fun of you doing so will probably do the same thing in a year when it’s considered “cool”.

Learn to apologize, learn to forgive, know your worth, and tell your favorite high school teacher just how great they are because they deserve it.

Thank you to the teachers who over the years let me feel safe and appreciated. Thank you to my mom who would hold me while I cried for hours on end staring at my phone screen unaware of what I did to deserve the hatred coming my way. And thank you to my dad for always thinking I was the coolest girl in school, with my two different colored shoes, regardless of what anyone had to say.

Dear Dad,

As I sit here in the library at Florida State University trying to get an assignment done, there is only one thing on my mind. I keep thinking about my father and how blessed I am to be his daughter. My dad turned fifty yesterday and that number should phase me but it doesn’t. When I think of my dad I think of someone who is hard working, honest, hilarious, courageous, outgoing, sarcastic, adventurous, loving, and everything more that I strive to be in my time on this planet.

I started thinking of my dad because I began to feel insecure for a minute when I looked around at all of the beautiful girls sitting near me. Then I remembered that just yesterday I was telling my dad about how the fraternity boys at University of Florida were so kind to me and his response was,

 “That’s because you’re absolutely beautiful.”

I remembered that my father said this to me and realized that his opinion is the only opinion of a man that has been valid in my life thus far and I am so grateful for that. To know that someone as brilliant as him thinks that I am beautiful is an accomplishment.

I think I have this really awesome ability to let people know I love them but not enough and not in a way that I should. I find myself distant and concerning people with my lack of selflessness. In an effort to gain self-confidence I have lost track of putting forth admiration for others.

So in writing this post I would like to tell my father that I love him.

I would like him to know that everyday I get up and I work hard because that’s what he did and if I grow up to be half as successful as he is, I will have won. When I define successful I mean that my dad is happy, confident, and busy. I strive to be someone who cares so much about others yet still holds a head so high.

Every day I wake up in hopes that I will love someone as much as he loves my mother, brother, and me. I hope that I grow to be as intelligent as him and as willing to listen to others.

Thank you dad, for reminding me that I am beautiful when I feel the complete opposite. Thank you for teaching me how to care. Thank you for showing me what hard work and dedication looks like and for being so accepting of my goals. Thank you for allowing me to go on the journey I am choosing to even if it is a bit unsettling at times. Thank you for being you and helping me to become the best version of myself that I can.

Happy Birthday, I am so glad that I am given another day to love and admire you.

Your daughter,

Savannah Lee

Fake it til you make it?

I wake up and I go on Instagram. I might scroll through Twitter or Facebook. I might get carried away stalking someone’s page and thinking how perfect he or she is. In between classes in college while living my average teenage life, I check up on these sites again… and again…. and again.

This is a daily routine, continuously checking these social media sites and seeing how perfect Alexis Ren’s body looked today, seeing how luxurious Kylie Jenner lived today. It’s a never-ending cycle of striving to look like someone or be someone in this vortex of a new generation.

Today I looked in the mirror and I found myself a little upset. I felt like I wasn’t as beautiful as I should be. My body wasn’t as toned and my skin complexion didn’t look desirable like the girls on my news feed every day. Then I realized that this is all a trap.

You see we have such easy access to these photos where all of these people of all varieties are living their own perfect world. We see how they are living day to day and we read their caption, which confirms the happiness that we see in the photo. It’s dangerous. It is really dangerous.

I shouldn’t be looking at someone’s smile in a photo and thinking “I wish I was as happy as they are in their life.” Maybe two minutes after that photo was taken they had a mental breakdown. There is so much not shared in these photos or tweets or statuses. I think it is so important to be reminded that a lot of what people portray their lives to be are nothing like the reality.

Social media is as fake or real as we choose it to be.

We set up these profiles for ourselves and we take time to edit what we want our world to be perceived as by others. It’s not like it use to be where the first time you meet someone is face to face and that is the first impression. I will have people come up to me often telling me they follow me on Instagram and it freaks me the hell out. It doesn’t freak me out because I don’t personally know them but it freaks me out because I know that they perceive me as this overly happy person who always is walking through life dressed well with good lighting.

I’m not always happy and I take ten minutes to edit my photos before posting the “perfect” image hoping and praying that it will get at least a sufficient amount of likes.

I find myself often talking with friends about how amazing someone is. I talk about how amazing that person is judging by their social media. I might have never met that person in my life but that doesn’t matter because I’ve stalked them enough to know them as an individual via social media. Right?

A person may be exactly who they portray themselves to be on the Internet and they may be completely opposite or similar but hiding a few things. There is so much room for fixing when you take reality to social media and it’s scary how much can be hidden behind a computer screen and how much can be manipulated through pictures and words.

Every day I check my Instagram to see if I have gained a follower or if someone has commented or liked my photo. I check to see if I have any direct messages where people I have never met send me hatred or admiration. I check to see if the girl I wake up every day wishing I looked like still looks just as beautiful. I check to see if the boy who I’ve been crushing on for weeks is still single and still not liking my photos.

Every day I check to see if this fake world is becoming more of a reality and sadly, it is and it is draining.

To look in the mirror and wish to see anything besides the best version of your own self is harmful. To be upset because a person who you have never met and don’t know a thing about looks happier than you in that instant is idiotic. To go to an event and feeling like it only really happened if you got a good Instagram photo is a terrifying new reality.

People will show the world what they chose to show the world. People will judge you and they will decide for themselves if they like what you post, if they relate to it or hate it.

No ones opinion of you or your choices matters. Nothing that you post on social media will define you as an individual unless you want it to. Your thoughts are just as important as the next persons and your face is just as beautiful as it should be because it is you.

I’m not willing to change much about my social media however I can say that there is a lot I have hidden from these sites. I have not chosen to show the days where I can’t get out of bed because I am too depressed. I have taken extra time out of my life to edit photos so that I look as okay as I want to. I will continue to pose a certain way in hopes that my body looks best from that angle. These are all my own personal decisions. I do want my social media to reflect who I am as an individual however there are so many things I have put on the internet that I wish I hadn’t. There are so many times that I have typed something out that I wish I hadn’t.

There is so much imperfection that goes into setting up this perfectly fake world that is becoming a reality. It is okay to be mistakenly real or fake on social media because at the end of the day we are all humans under the same sun and no amount of followers can decrease the importance of your existence.

Dear anyone and everyone…

My name is Savannah Lee. I am an 18 year old college student freshman at Florida State University. I have been experiencing the “college life”, going out with several friends and doing what most college students do. Growing up I have had very informative parents who have never sheltered me in telling me that the world is this beautiful place full of all decently nice human beings. In fact as much as I would like to believe this world is incredibly generous, there is so much bad along with all of the good. Unfortunately some of my friends’ parents haven’t necessarily been as open with them. These friends of mine have no idea what intentions humans are capable of having and that is a very sad thing to me. Some of these friends had no idea that guys would slip a drug into their drink behind their back. These friends didn’t know that you NEED a friend, a good friend, to be around you at all times while you’re drinking. These friends didn’t know that a boy would offer so kindly to take them home and then ditch them in the morning once they got what they wanted. As I have previously mentioned, I am fortunate. I am well aware of these things and I have been cautious for quite some time now. I had a friend come up to me today telling me she had a terrible weekend. She didn’t go to classes yesterday and I was concerned but I figured she was just sick. My friend was raped. She said this:

“It’s fine I’ve told my mom and everything and it’s fine I don’t want to talk about it”.

I’m writing this out of genuine pain. How can someone say, “it’s fine”… Has our generation become so accustomed to such repulsive acts of violence that we see it as okay? No, being taken advantage of is NOT “fine”. No, it is NOT fair. No, it is NOT okay. She claims it was her fault because she drank too much and she can’t even remember the night. HOW is it her fault that a man took her clearly incoherent self to his apartment and used her body as a tool?

I don’t think my writing will suddenly change the world and rape will no longer exist. In fact I doubt the majority of people to read this article will be men. However I will say this, if you are a parent please do as mine did. Tell your kid what is happening. Teach them that not everything in life is a walk of sunshine. Teach them that people can be cruel and that it is SO important especially for women to keep their guard up. Parents to boys, please do your best to teach them respect. As it is a minimal act, make them open doors for women. Allow them to see women as precious and not objects.

When a boy I am not sure of touches me I automatically feel slight discomfort. The thought of someone completely using my body to their disturbing advantage makes me want to throw up.

A few days ago as I left my dorm room a boy who lives in my hall said “Hey nice leggings they accentuate your ass”. I’ve never in my life spoken to this boy. I don’t know what exactly went through his head as he said this. I certainly don’t know who raised him to believe a comment so degrading is okay to say. This one line from this stranger’s mouth ruined my morning. I felt like absolutely nothing for a solid ten minutes. I figured, “Wow this boy sees nothing but my body all because I am dressed in workout clothes before this ballet class”…. I thought to myself “I should’ve worn sweat pants over this leotard instead of leggings.” Are you serious? Why should I have to change my wardrobe just because a boy doesn’t have any sense of respect?

Parents, please talk to your kids.

Kids, I know I am still new to this world and finding my way but it is imperative to keep your guard up and know who is a friend, how to protect yourself, and stay confident.

Women, you are beautiful strong individuals regardless of what some boy down the hall may say to you.

Disrespectful little boys, get your shit together.

Men who are real men, thank you.