“Nobody is looking at you the way you think they are. Nobody is thinking about you the way you wish they would. They are looking at themselves. They are thinking about themselves. They are reading themselves. This isn’t sad, it’s freeing. This should be the crux of your ultimate liberation. The truth is that you have nobody to prove wrong but yourself. The people from your past probably didn’t disapprove of yourself nearly as much as you feared they did. This closure is for you. This growth is for you. This change is yours. This is you vs. you, you meeting you, you seeing you for the first time. This is about you becoming who you know you can be. This is about you finally living up to your potential. But mostly, this is about you recognizing that you were not your best self before. You didn’t behave the way you wish you would have. You didn’t do what you should have. You weren’t what you hoped you’d be. Whenever we want desperately to prove someone else wrong, what we are really trying to do is quell our own lingering disappointment that we didn’t live up to our own expectations. So remember this, the next time you’re trying to craft a glow up story that is compelling to others, ask yourself why you are still waiting for their approval. The answer, almost always, is that you still do not have your own.”
— Brianna Wiest, Thought Catalog
