I always felt kind of alone in this life. As I grew older, I saw everyone band together on social media, posting their drunken nights and blurry photos of the city. I always kept to myself and had 1-2 friends, all of us a little nerdy and out of place, but we worked as a friend group for the time being. That 1-2 obviously rotated as life went on.

When I was 22-25, I yearned for the fake social interactions I was watching online. I wanted fun girlie friends to hang with, I wanted normalcy. Growing up in my family, I yearned for the things I saw on TV/in American media. So I dove straight in. I slept with all the wrong people, too fast. I drank too much. I smoked too much. Several of these friends I had did terrible things to me: one went into my snapchat on my phone while I was showering and started messaging obscenities to my partner at the time. Another took money from me for drugs under the guise that she was essentially homeless and needed food for her and her family. Several just wanted a token lesbian friend, but were secretly talking behind my back.

I found my partner, my ultimate best friend, and when I finally knew what it was like to be worth something to someone...to have them truly love you. Not sit back and judge you for being ugly/fat/worthless...all of a sudden the need for everyone else started to dissipate. The need for the fake people around me, the ones who would leave me for dead (let's be real) in a dire situation on a bad night out...was gone.

I have my best friend, too, and so many people I can tap in with throughout the years who I know are good souls. But really, I am only close to 2 people. And at 30, that's okay, and it's a beautiful thing to have the absence of drama in my life. I try to get closer to people and when they put up a wall and don't want to dive deep, I put mine up now too. I write them out of my mind, I am training myself to care less.

When someone says something out of pocket, I hold boundaries now. I stand up for myself, because for my entire life, not even my own parents did this. I was the girl everyone could band against. For so long I let that define me....

Take me out of the competition.

Take me out of the equation.

Take me out of your mind.

I reject that bullied-girl persona. I reject being a scapegoat for not only my blood relatives, but for the people who pass by my life from various points of it.

I am beautiful. I am worthy.

What's worth anyway? What we mean to everyone else?

Shouldn't it be what we mean to ourselves?

shot by Janet Mona, 2024