Acceptance (not to a university (yet!))

These days, I am anxious all the time. I am anxious from the moment when I wake up and grab my phone to check whether a university has sent a decision yet. I am worried about how I am going to cook healthy on my own in just five months. My brain is confused by the excitement in figuring out how to live my life, the fear of being all alone, and want to cling to the comfort of my home.

I am not the biggest fan of my smile - my dentist friend once spoke about smile fixing explaining how the gums of someone are seen and I applied that to myself. As a kid I hated my hair. It was too frizzy and curly. It still is too frizzy. The straight fronts make me miss my curls. I have a gigantic forehead. I wanted a thigh gap back in high school. I wished my body type was narrower, skin tone a few shades lighter, lips less grey and more pink.

Failing at things bothers me. I am afraid of not being good at things. I made sure that I could run before I began going to a run club. I made sure that I could touch my toes before I began yoga class (although that was not enough). The only time I am okay with being a beginner is if I am surrounded by beginners. Which is pretty ridiculous, but the idea of being bad at something is too scary to explore.

Okay Kanksha, you have displayed that things bother you. And these things bother a lot of people. People are anxious about a variety of things. Most of your friends are currently worried about getting into their dream University. Then there are people who feel that they don't look that great. And there also exist people with the fear of failure. (Mind you, these three are just examples that I am discussing, what I say next applies to so much more!) So what do you think they should do about it?

There are two ways to go about this, and there's no easy way to say it.

Either I could tell you that you will get your dream job, dream University, or dream girl. I could tell you that you look like the next supermodel. But there is no guarantee that anything I said is true, and my words will not help you in any way except give you temporary relief and perhaps even more pain if the outcome is not my predicted rosy one.

So then we have option two which involves me saying what is real. Option two involves YOU telling yourself what is real. Maybe you will get in, maybe you will get a letter of rejection. Maybe you look great, maybe you look average (maybe you do not look good at all). It's a fact, some people are more beautiful than the others, and that is not your fault. It's the acceptance of what is going to happen in life has no guarantee that sets you free. It's the acceptance of yourself wholly, that makes you feel confident and good about yourself. It's the acceptance of failure and being bad at something, that allows you to eventually excel at it if you want to.

I urge you to accept things for the way they are. It is hard and it sucks. Most of the times we want to stick to our happy little place. But sometimes we are forced to get out of there.

So when you are forced, get out. Feel the discomfort but do not be bogged down by it. Accept the unknown. Accept everything about yourself. If you don't like something, see how you can change it. If you can't change it, embrace it.

I am certain you will feel better. Just keep trying.
Kanksha