Stop hating yourself for the things that make you special


Hello everyone,

How's life on your side doing? On mine, COVID has delivered yet another striking blow. Not that this is new or uncharacteristic of COVID; but somehow I manage to be surprised every time.

The end of the year is coming and to make sure that all the international boarders can go home, my school is giving people the option of isolating for the rest of the term. I am not going back home this summer because both the UK and my home country have decided to make it extremely difficult for me... so I am not really included in the bracket of people that can isolate. I completely understand why people that are going home would want to isolate, but I can't help but feel a bit sad at the fact that once again COVID is low-key destroying the end of the term. It's easy for me to wish for extremes when all I can do is wish for them, but I do wish that COVID would just end already. I'm getting exhausted with all the it's-getting-betters followed by it's-getting-worse. I wish it would just cease to exist. Granted, life might never be the same again. Like 9/11, COVID might transform the way we live forever. But somedays, it's just a lot easier to wish that we could get to the place where we finally know the full extent to which COVID has affected us instead of constantly living in this space of uncertainty. If I'm feeling this way, I can only imagine how those who've faced the worst end of COVID feel.


In other news, recently I realised a part of myself that I was largely keeping under wraps. In the days we live in, we hear so many people talking about being true to yourself and being unique and authentic. These things are definitely important. But I feel like all this talk makes the message a lot harder to practice because we find it so hard to admit the parts of ourselves that we are hiding. Simply put, ever since I came to England, I have never let my natural hair out in school. At first, it wasn't a conscious decision not to let it out; braids were just easier and more versatile. I had come from a school where we would have taken any opportunity to have our hair out and so at first I wouldn't even have considered that I was intentionally hiding it. But then there would be circumstances when I could have let my natural hair out and I found myself eagerly looking for any other alternative. It was not until this last week that I realised I was incredibly shy about it. Braids do not necessarily help me fit in with a crowd of people that have such different hair, but in a lot of ways, they felt safer and more acceptable than my actual hair. We had a new girl in school who also happened to have an afro and although she came to school with braids, she soon loosened her hair and let it all out. Seeing her made me face the real reason why I had not ever loosened my hair. I was insecure. I was scared of what people would say. I was scared that they would say anything. I was scared of standing out. I am not on the other side of this fence yet, but as my mum has been telling me, this is not the type of thing to be ashamed of. My hair is legitimately a part of who I am. And so even though I could change its appearance and alter it to fit in with what I think is most acceptable, it does not change the fact that my hair is my hair. And so I have taken it upon myself to embrace it and all the associated questions and maybe stares that come with it. We all have things that are unique about us; things that would make us stand out even at times where it might be more comfortable to fit in. But the true test of courage is embracing those differences and embracing them proudly. Not because it's easy or comfortable, but because we recognise that those things make us who we are and to deny them is to deny part of ourselves.

You were not made to look or live or think like everyone else. So stop hating yourself for the things that make you special.

God bless.

Dera

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