sometimes it takes years before you fully understand the reality of a situation you were in, for you to look back and see it for what it truly was

if it’s meant for me, I will have it. if it isn’t, I’m prepared to receive something even better.

growing up a woman is learning that most things you thought insignificant or even cute about your appearance are actually wrong and bad and you are expected to change them if you want to be treated with basic human decency. and any "failure" to spend the appropriate amount of time altering your natural appearance to fit these impossible standards is taken as laziness or unprofessionalism or, like, a feminist statement. meanwhile you're just trying to exist