Fear

We all have our fears. For some its height, spiders, public speaking or even death. Me, I fear failure.

Failure its a part of life and yet its probably one of my greatest fears. I cannot stand the thought of failing. No matter how hard you try, how hard you work, failure is sometimes inevitable. I can't stand the feeling of knowing that my best just isn't good enough. It is almost impossible for me to put into words how I feel, I am struggling just typing this. It goes further then just failing a test or even a quiz in school but being a failure. Not succceeding in life, and reaching my goals. Perhaps I put too much pressure on myself. I feel like a big part of this for me is not knowing what the future holds. I feel like I talk about this a lot, but its just that I would love to know where I am going to be in the next 5 or even 10 years. Perhaps its not about failure but about making the right choices and knowing that I have done the right thing and have gotten to where I need to be. I wish that I had a crystal ball to know my future, I do not need to know exactly what has happened, more I just need to know that I am going to be okay. I want to reach my goals. I want to make something out of my life. I feel like this internal struggle to become something is eating away at me. For the most part I just want to be happy. I want to have met the goals that I am setting for myself. I feel like not meeting these goals would make me a failure. Perhaps its not about failing but being a failure in the eyes of others. I do not really know. Its confusing. Life is confusing. I wish I had the answers but I don't. No one really does. I am not going to sit here and act like I know what is going to happen. Your guess is as good as mine. I feel like just being myself here has become hard and thats not why I started this blog. I wanted to be able to be myself, but then it turned into this whole other thing and somehow, someway, somewhere I lost who I am. I hate that. I hate that I let that happen. I want to get back to me, this right here. This strange, random, fun loving girl. I may no longer be 16, but 18 is just as great. I just want to let go open up and be me again. I hope that I can. I hope that I can put the cares behind me, the fears and the failures and work forward and move on.

Belle

Getting Older...

Wow! It's hard to believe that summer is almost over. For me it means that in about four weeks I will be moving away from home to go to school. Granted I'm not moving that far. Only about 3 hours away but still its far enough for me. I am very close to my family and I know that I am going to miss them. I am very excited to start school though. I really can't wait to see what September has in store for me. I can barely contain my excitement. Today was a tough day. One of my best friends is leaving in a couple of days for school. She's leaving the country and her school starts earlier then mine. Meaning that tonight we all said good bye to her and had one last hang out session before she leaves. It still doesn't seem real. I can't believe that my little group of friends is being broken up. Its hard. I hope that I will be able to keep in touch with them while we are all off doing our own things in different parts of the world. After spending four years together being practically inseparable its strange to think that we will not be going to class together again next year. I know that everyone feels this way as they are about to start university and I know its time to let go of my high school years as strange as that is. The other day I said I'm going to hang out with my high school friends and I felt incredibly old. Have you ever noticed that you always feel younger then you are. When I was in grade nine the grade twelves seems so old and it was hard for me to picture myself as one of them. Now that time as come and gone and I still in some ways feel like I am in grade nine. When I think of university students I think of people much older then myself and yet here I am about to start university. I am no longer a high school student but a university one. I feel like just when I've come to accept what I am its already over. Getting used to being in grade twelve and then before you know it I was graduating and the year was over. It flew by. It was an amazing year full of good times with friends and classmates. Getting to know my teachers better and being able to focus on subjects that I am really interested in. Grade 12 for me was probably my best year of high school and the one that I most enjoyed. I have no regrets about the past year and I would do everything exactly the same if given the chance. I did everything I wanted to do. I got involved in everything that I wanted to be involved in. That made the difference for me I think. Being able to do everything I loved and accomplish the goals I set for myself at the end of last year. Showing not only myself but everyone else that I could do it and that I was a known figure in the school. It was important to me and while I was often stressed out and looking back I don't really know how I survived. I am glad I did everything that I did because I am a stronger person for it. This past year was one that I will never forget. It was full of great memories and I was able to strengthen my friendships with those who meant the most to me. I know who my real friends are and I am happy with the person that I am. I know who I am. I may not know what I want to do in life right at this very moment or what the future holds or what I will be doing this time next year but I am okay with that because right now I like who I am. It took me a long time to get to this place, but I am happy with who I am. For now thats more then enough.

Love,

Belle

Body Image

Heyy Everyone,

The other day I was on Teen Vogue, and they had a survey about body image, which I decided to take and it got me thinking. The survey asked questions about what you thought about your body and celbs bodys, that sort of thing.

I personally feel that I have a postive body image. I may not like everything about my body, 100% of the time, but for the most part I am okay with my body. I personally feel like you wouldn't be able to find someone who likes every single thing about their body all the time. We all have those days where we hate certain parts of our body.

The media is constantly discussing stars and their weight. They can never win, they gain weight and they are fat, they lose weight and they have an eating disorder, there is never a happy medium. The survey asked what we thought was the best body type, and beside healthy they had Leighton Meester in brackets. I would personally consider her to be on the skinny side. I think that our perception of what is a normal healthy body weight has been affected by the media.

To me stars such as Selina Gomez and Taylor Swift have positive body images. They do not talk badly about their bodies and focus their attention on other more important issues. I hate how the media constantly looks at stars and their weight. Weight to me is just a number. What matters is how you feel about yourself. For me clothes allow me to feel good about myself. When I feel good in what I am wearing my confidence goes way up. It doesn't matter what the number on the scale is.

I find that many of these Teen magazines are very hypocritical. They have articles on the dangers of eating disorders and on have a positive body image. Yet you turn the page and their is a work out plan and a diet waiting for you to try. They are sending girls mixed messages about what they should care about. Don't get me wrong it is important to be healthy. To eat and exercise regularity. But why does exercising have to be running on a track or lifting weights. Why can it not be walking the dog or dancing? We seem to forget that their are other ways of being active. Eating healthy doesn't have to mean cutting out the foods you love. Yet we think diet and automatically its low carb, no sugar and no sweets. Why does eating healthy have to be considered a diet. Diet gives a negative image. Eating healthy doesn't mean cutting things out or eating less. To me at least it means eating more fruits and vegetables and eating fast food less often.

I think as girls we are hardest on ourselves and on each other. Why does it matter what size I wear. Or what size my friends wear? I think that we need to be less harsh on each other and recognize that everyone is beautiful in their own way. I have seen girls buy clothes a size too small for the fear of going up a size and in hopes of fitting into it later on. Why do we do that. What is this fear of buying clothes that fit. Why does it matter what the number on the tag says. When did the number become more important then the way we feel in the clothes.

We realize that their are body image issues among teen girls. Yet we do nothing to change it. Magazines do a feature on it and yet they still put work out routines in the same issue. Its something that I don't think is going to change unless we change. Girls need to realize that they are worth more then just the numbers, the number of their weight and the number on the tag. We need to stop judging other girls and realize the beauty in everyone. If everyone takes a stand things will begin to change.

Belle.