Lost in Translation: December 2015

Some time ago my dad and I were discussing a trip to Egypt. I was already picturing myself in front of pyramids, taking pictures of camels and freaking out over crocodiles. My dad was thinking of something else entirely. 'Maybe I could trade you for camels,' he joked. 'Young blond girl should fetch quite a few, don't you think?'

I snorted. 'They'll give you one crippled camel for me - if you're lucky.'

The minute I said those words, all hell broke loose. My dad was furious. He couldn't believe I'd spoken about myself like that. 'Don't you ever say those words again!' he yelled loud enough for the entire town to hear. I, as the more or less good daughter that I am, never said it again. Yet I've thought it many times: at the very best I'm worth one crippled camel.

I know that I have self-esteem issues. If you look 'insecure' up in the dictionary, it'll show you a picture of me. I can't even remember a time when I wasn't insecure. There's always something about myself that I hate. Not just dislike, no, pure strong hate. If you'd ask me to describe myself, I'd say I'm an ugly, nasty, selfish person. Maybe that's not really the person I am, but it's certainly the person everyone always told me I am. If people tell you something every day, the chance that you'll start believing what they say are huge. Sadly, I was always told I'm ugly. Not just my playground nemesis said I was ugly when we were in kindergarten, throughout the years my teachers and friends said it too. Even strangers said it. At first I didn't believe it, but as I turned 17, not a single guy had ever shown genuine interest in me. By then, I was already convinced I was ugly, but from that moment on I saw it as the main reason why I didn't have a lot of friends or a boyfriend. Old insults started to haunt me again. "Your nose is huge." "Your eyebrows make you look like an ape." "If an orc had a miscarriage that somehow manages to grow up, it would look exactly like you."

The words echoed through my mind every time I looked in the mirror. For a while I even avoided mirrors. I avoided group pictures. I avoided everything that could show me my face. I hated it. Everyone else hated it, they told me so, didn't they?

I grew a little older, but not much wiser. Friends began to tell me that it's the inside that counts. But nothing changed: I was still a loner at 19. Clearly something more than just my face was wrong with me. Was my inside worthless too?

I was told that I was arrogant and selfish. I was told that I was annoying, a pain in the ass, not good enough. Not good enough. Those words made themselves a permanent home in my brain and in my heart.

I'm lucky though. I have some close friends, a family that cares about me. But the minute I'm being ignored in a group chat, the minute a friend cancels plans, I think it's because of me. Because I'm not good enough to be their friend. I'm not good enough to be around...

Some people tried to help me. They told me they thought I was pretty, but I didn't believe them. These people were my close friends and they had to think I was pretty. That's what friends are for, right? Friends like each other, both their perfect parts and their gigantic flaws.

I didn't believe the people who tried to help me. I realized that. I think I somehow knew I had solve my self-esteem issues by myself.

I don't hate myself anymore, at least not as much as I hated myself when I was 17. I don't know what changed, but something changed for the better, even if it's only a little. I still think I'm not good enough, that that's why I'm always alone. But I can look at myself in the mirror again. I'm part of all my class's group pictures now, most of the time even standing right in the middle. It'll be a while before I'm the one who takes the picture, but at least I'm part of it now. I can even take selfies on good days. Okay, I filter and change those selfies until I don't look like myself anymore, but on good days, I think I'm worth a picture. On those days, I'm almost good enough. Almost, not quite. There's always this little voice in the back of my mind, telling me I'll always be ugly and worthless. That voice sounds like my high school 'friends', who told me not to take selfies: a picture of my face was the ugliest profile picture they'd ever seen, they said, behind my back, but loud enough for me to hear it. That voice, that mean little voice, is the main reason why my selfies often look sad.

A friend of mine once said that I'm awesome when I'm not insecure. I laughed at that. After all, I'm always insecure. Yet somehow he inspired me that day. I don't want to be insecure anymore. I don't want t go around, thinking I'm the ugliest girl on the planet. I don't want to think that I'm not good enough for my friends, neither do I want to think that I'm only worth a crippled camel. I want to be awesome. I want to be that confident blogger you know all the time.

I have a long way to go. There'll be many days on which I wake up, hating myself. But there'll also be days when I just try to be the best person I can. If the best person I can be isn't good enough for someone, that should be their problem, not mine.

Stay Awesome!

10 Fellow Ramblers

Dear glasses,
We've been together since December 2011. I remember the first time I saw you very well. I feel head over heels in love with you. Yet here we are, four years later, and it's time to say goodbye.

To be perfectly honest, I'm glad it's over between us. Ever since my dad stepped on you, things haven't been the same. Multiple times you almost broke and the last couple of weeks I didn't dare fold you (if that's how you say it, probably not) in case you'd break for good. But let's face it, things have been going downhill for a long time. You were always lost. Okay, I admit that it was my mistake that I lost you in my wardrobe. I shouldn't have left you there when I went downstairs to get a cookie. That was my fault. But that time you fell behind a pile of towels while I was in the shower? Or that time I took a nap and you disappeared under the couch? That was your fault, 100% your fault.
And don't get me started on all those times when you fogged up in the winter, or even when it was 20 degrees Celsius outside and I tried to drink tea. The exact opposite bugged me too: when I needed you to fog up in the middle of summer, you wouldn't. How was I supposed to clean you on those days if you wouldn't fog up? Apart from that, would it kill you to stay clean for a second? These last few months no one has been able to clean you. Not even my mom and she can get anything clean!
Seriously, glasses, I know I'm not an easy person, but sometimes you seemed yo go out of your way to annoy me. Every time I put my headphones on, you seemed to be trying to enter my skull. The pain you caused me almost drove me crazy. Taking a nap or just lying down on the couch while watching tv was also impossible because of you. I'm not an easy person, but you weren't easy either. Life together was no walk in the park...

But in the end, my dear glasses, I loved you for most of those four years we spent together. We've seen some amazing places. You've enabled me to see the sun rise over Ayer's Rock and Machu Picchu, you've helped me to see cars coming at me from all sides on my driving exam and you made me see the wonderful grades I graduated high school with.
You've helped me see for four years. That's a long time and that's why I forgive you for all your highly annoying flaws. Time to pass the baton to these awesome guys.

Don't be a stranger, take care and...
Stay Awesome!

4 Fellow Ramblers

I have a confession to make: I am unhappy. Yes, you read that right. I'm not a happy girl and have been unhappy for a little while now. I don't know when I started to feel so blue. A few months ago I was still excited to do a summer program in India, I felt good about myself and had the best friends in the world. Then everything changed. My summer program was cancelled. People started calling me ugly again. My best friend is acting very distant and my other friends either moved away or just don't quite get me and my passion for stories.

Over the past few days I've been feeling very lonely. Add a truckload of college work to the situation and voilà: unhappy Envy.

I was okay with being unhappy. I hadn't even noticed that I'd slipped into unhappiness until a worried classmate asked me if I was okay. That moment I realized I wasn't okay. I was far from okay. Something had to change. I just didn't have a clue how to change things for the better, The last time I'd felt like this was almost ten years ago. Back then my mom sat down on the couch with me each and every day. She wouldn't and I couldn't leave until I'd told about at least one thing, not matter how small, that had made me happy that day. We simply called it the Highlight of the Day.
I tried doing the old Highlight of the Day ritual on my own, because I didn't want my mom to get worried about me. It didn't work. I just brought myself down, thinking my Highlights were pathetic.
Then one day, last Friday to be exact, I found myself on the 100 Happy Days Challenge website. I don't know how or why I'd ended up there, but if felt good. I'd heard of the challenge before, I'd even wanted to try it if I'd ever find time. Finding time didn't seem so important now. Changing my mindset did. I signed up for the challenge the very next day. It felt like the best thing I could do for myself.

The challenge is simple: share a picture of something that made you happy. Do that every single day for 100 days in a row. The point of sharing the pictures isn't to make others jealous or show your awesome life off. The point is to take time to enjoy life each and every day. Sharing makes it easier to keep going, like I realized when I couldn't keep my old ritual up by myself.

I've started my challenge yesterday and decided to write a post about it too. I picked a pencil at random and out of all the fifty pencils I have on my desk (I have a bit of a pencil problem), this was the one I got.

"Things are looking up". If that isn't a good sign to start a challenge with, I don't know what is. Follow me on Instagram to support me during my challenge and don't forget to Stay Awesome!

10 Fellow Ramblers

6 Fellow Ramblers

As summer vacation ended, panic started. My college is big on team building and trust in sophomore year. One of the things we had to do to 'strenghten and stimulate the group's cohesion' is a pecha kucha presentation.

Apparently 'pecha kucha' is Japanese for small talk. The presentation had to have 15 slides filled with pictures and I had 20 seconds per slide to tell something about it. The catch: I had to tell my life story in those 15 slides. Enter panicking Envy: I don't like talking about myself. Sure, I like to tweet pointless information about my opinion on mangoes to stangers, but actual talking to actual people? No thank you.

I spent weeks figuring out what I was going to tell and how I was going to tell it. It sounds easy to fill 15 slides with pictures of your life, but I got stuck after 8 slides.

A whole lot of complaining and brainstorming with friends later, I managed to fill the slides. I used a few to tell how I see myself, I told about my passion and my blog, my friends and my goals in life. When the big day finally came, I was still freaking nervous, but I was so proud of my presentation that I'm going to share it with all of you here today.

Envy's Pecha Kucha

"I wanted to start my pecha kucha with this picture, because I think this is how most of you see me. I'm calm, I'm quiet, reserved... I don't have to be the centre of attention, that's not me. This is who I am to others"

At this point I was awkwardly looking at the picture on the screen. What more was there to tell? I was pretty sure that this was how everyone saw me. Now they'd get to see how I see myself. I wasn't sure if I was ready for my classmates' reactions to the next picture.

"But this picture shows how I am on the inside. This is how I feel about myself: insecure, not good enough. I was bullied in elementary school, which is why I push people away from me. I'm not easy to get to know, I haven't let you come close to me yet. Because of that, it might seem like I don't have many friends."

It wasn't fun to tell this to a group of people who already thought of me as a bit of a pessimistic weirdo, but I was glad to finally say these things out loud. It was also the last negative part of my pecha kucha and I was so excited for the next slide.

6 Fellow Ramblers

8 Fellow Ramblers

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