SRPTGR

⠀You mean to tell me it's not common for them to fall prey of the social obsession over physical appearance? Specially little girls who were bullied for not being up to the standard, girls who crave attention from someone well-liked or popular because that would make them worthy or visible to the others. The reason they are so many books and movies and stories about how awful is to be a teenage girl, is not for fun. The expectations are crushing: from your parents, from society, from the people at power even.

And if you were one of this girls, only to wake up one day after a reality check, let me tell you it hits you so, so hard. You'd obsess over the lost time, terrified it's too late, you'll never be able to catch up with the others. You fell into the trap and now it's game over. Except is not, but no one will ever stop reminding you of that mistake you made.

Even if it was on a period of your life when things were changing so fast you could barely follow the flow of it all. Your body was changing, hormones betraying you. You were expected to be sincere but not overly vulnerable and be pretty but not superficial and be joyful but not annoying and be quiet but not utterly submissive and— you get it.

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⠀My favorite part is that Sakura, a late bloomer, never gave up on herself. For all the people who wasted years of their life caring so much about things that didn't matter at all in the end, Sakura is good representation of what it feels to try and recover. Honey, you can still achieve your dream. Stop beating yourself up, stop destroying yourself over mistake you knew because you didn't know better. You know better now, don't you?

It's not gonna be easy, but you can still work for it, go for it, train for it, you can change. Humans are allowed to change. If you had a slow start, if you found your purpose years after you were expected too, if you find it hard to understand what to do or even understand yourself, if you crumbled under the pressure, if you weren't as strong willed or if you didn't have it as bad as others, breath, it's okay, don't punish yourself any further.

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⠀And it brings me to the question of why do we confuse obsession with passion. Why do we turn innocent actions into something with ill intentions?

Naruto was passionate about being Hokage the same way Sasuke was passionate about revenge. Sasuke's thing wasn't negative before Orochimaru put in his head that he was wasting time. Sakura was passionate about getting recognition from Sasuke at first, which is not so different from Naruto wanting recognition from the village or Sasuke wanting his brother to acknowledge him.

And it was not until the Forest of Death that she realized she doesn't want recognition of that type anymore. That's the symbolism behind her cutting her hair. She wants Naruto and Sasuke to see her as someone they can truly trust in, as an equal not in terms of power, but as reliable teammates. There she shows that she has grown to the point she cares about them both, about what both of them think of her, about their well-being and approval as her friends. She's done wasting time, and even when we see she's every inch as weak as she was before, what changes is her actitud.

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⠀If you read her interactions with this in mind, it makes more sense.

In the beginning of the Chunnin Exams, Kakashi makes sure she will participate for herself and not her teammates. She does. And Kakashi's worries are confirmed twice, when she almost raised her hand after the writing exam because she was concerned about Naruto and when she almost raised her hand after the Forest of Death, because she was concerned about Sasuke. She wanted to be there but she was willing to give it up if it was to protect her teammates dreams or well-being.

She tries to stop Sasuke from leaving the village because that's her first big loss. That's her first time facing a tragedy. It is traumatic, just not so big when compared to her team experiences. But she just realized how much they mean to her and how much she wants to be better for them and now it's over, too late, too late, too late.

She asks Naruto to retrieve Sasuke because she does know she was weak, she wasted her time, she should be better. And when Naruto comes back so beaten, she swears next time she will be able to go with him. At least strong enough to be considered to go on the mission, to be considered useful enough, skillful enough.

Her reason to train with Tsunade is because she wants to be capable of resisting the conditions of a fight. Being a medic nin made her irreplaceable, being a combat medic nin gave her the freedom of following her team around and withstanding more than the common medic nin.

She fights Sasori and learns mid-fight to deal with him without Chiyo'd help, all not just for Gaara, but for a clue of Sasuke's whereabouts. And she got it. In that sense, she reached her goal in that moment. She proved she had it in her.

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⠀From there on, it was a struggle. Almost every decision she made, it was thinking of how she could help or what was (wrongly assumed) her responsibility to her team.

She confessed to Naruto her fake love because she believed it was her responsibility, when it was not. Naruto's feelings were their own, his promise to take Sasuke back to Konoha maybe started with her, but became his own quickly. She didn't have to lie to him and to herself in order to fix only temporally a situation that would get out of their hands anyway. Was it something awful to do? Yes. Was she wrong? Yes. Should it be excused? No. But there is a reason to her actions.

She tried to kill Sasuke because she thought she had a responsibility to him as her teammate (to stop him from descending more into darkness), to Naruto as her teammate and friends (to spare him of the hurt of being the one to kill Sasuke) and to Konoha and the shinobi world (to stop his acts, to put at end to the madness).

When she jumps to their side at war and says she has finally reach them, she means this, the fact she has a reason to stand beside them even if it's not in power or fighting skills. Her invocation is as useful as theirs, she's the best medic nin available so she needs to go with them, even if only for a second or even if only on one thing, she can still do something for them. Let it be keeping Naruto's heart beating, or giving Obito chakra to keep his Mangekyou running longer to find Sasuke, or hit Kaguya in the head so Naruto and Sasuke can seal her.

She even says it. If with her life she can help them at least a little, if she can change things to their favor at least a little, if she can heal them at least a little, she'd be satisfied with that.

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⠀Isn't it amazing that the girl who wasted her Academy years in being pretty and spend years upon years trying to be accepted by society, a girl so weak and helpless, became a woman capable of helping so many people. Someone strong and reliable, top on her field, compared to the best of the kunoichis. She didn't know what she wanted in life at 12 years old (she rambled nonsense when Kakashi asked), but when she finally figured out, she didn't stop until achieving it.

And I think that's good, right there. I don't like how the story execute this concept, I don't like how certain things were portrayed, but it makes sense when you consider her core as a character.