impacts

One of my friends recently suggested that I write about how my friends have impacted my life. I thought this was a really cool idea, but I wanted to take it one step further. I want to be open about how many different things have impacted and influenced my life, mainly focusing on friends, family, and society.

The reason this idea really stood out to me was because the impacts that people have on your life really shapes you into the person you are. With the friends you make, your family relationships, a strangers smile, etc. They all form us and our personalities into what they really are.

friends

I like to think that I am a really friendly person. This has made it so that I have lots of different friends. Honestly, being able to understand how many people I am friends to and have connections with in different ways is a huge confidence builder to me. Each one has inspired me, most have supported my decisions, and few have walked away.

Let’s start with the ones I have knows for the longest. I have a lot of friends that I have knows since I was 3, or since I was 5, or others I have known since elementry school. These friendships I hold really close to me. These friendships have impacted me in many ways. First, that friendships like this are really sentimental to myself, sometimes they are able to feel more like family when I am struggling with my own family. Second, one of my worst traits is how badly I compare myself to others. Especially people I’ve know for a long time. Since I know how beautiful these people are (inside and out), I ruin my own self imaging because they seem so much better than myself in my mind. Lastly, these friends were able to change my definition of what a soulmate is. A soulmate is someone that you’re supposed to meet on your journey, that loves you even when it knows your flaws. Most importantly, a soulmate is not just one person. These people come and go, but they will always have a place in your heart, even when they’re gone.

The people I have met more recently have changed me more than I will ever even be able to comprehend. The person I was 5 years ago wouldn’t even recognize me if she got into a time machine and came to see me today. She would be confused. This isn’t a bad thing, though! Change to me is actually quite beautiful.

These friends have been able to show me how hurtful judgement can be. These friends have been able to take me outside of my comfort zones. These friends have shown me how to live life to the fullest. These friends have shown me how many different people you can be friends with if you just reach out, be kind, and understand eachother. All I have for these friends I’ve met and helped change me is love and gratitude.

family

Family is probably the thing in our lives that impact us the most. Our hearts are unvolentarily tied to our families. This, to me, means that even when we are treated pourly, even when we are betrayed, even when we leave them or vice-versa, even when we stop caring for our family…. we still care for our family. This is hard to understand because sometimes it is our family that brings us the most hurt.

Disclaimer: Honestly… I don’t really know if any of you would be reading this, but if you’re a member of my family, you might want to stop reading now if you are afraid that what I might say might hurt you. That is never my intention. I love you all.

Some background: Being the youngest, I feel really distant from my family. It doesn’t help that there are pretty big age gaps between me and my siblings. I am 12 years apart from my oldest sibling, and the closest to age I am to one of them is 4 years. They have all been moved out for at least 3 years now. I’m not very close with my dad (he loves fishing and camping and for the majority of his life he was a construction worker. i’ve never been very fond of that type of stuff). I talk to my mom a lot, but I don’t think she understands me very well, or really tries to.

My family can be pretty judgemental a lot of the time. Not liking what I wear, not seeming to like how my body looks or my face without makeup. In this way, they have taken away a lot of my confidence, even at a young age (when I didn’t even know what confidence really was). They don’t seem to like my personality too much either. Ever since I was a kid I’ve been told often by them that I talk to much, my mom always made fun of me for it and stopped listening a lot of the time. Now, I only talk that much around people I’m comfortable around. I don’t talk a lot at family gatherings.

I lack feeling love and support from the ones I have known the longest.

On the other hand, my family is a lot of hard workers. I am impacted daily by them, always trying to work as hard as I can and trying to be as selfless as them (not going to lie, something i have struggled with in the past). And if you know my dad, he has the biggest, happiest smile in the world. I have been asked all my life how my dad is so happy all the time or if he has every been mad. I try to smile more because of his impact on others.

I think that is all I wanted to express with that one.

society/strangers

Society has had a pretty big impact on me too. I feel like I’ve talked a lot about my bad self confidence on this post, but social media is a big part of the issues I have with loving myself. It is so hard to see skiny girls being praised on social media. I am constantly comparing myself to them. Comparing the likes and comments and taking those numbers to heart. Feeling ugly if I post a picture that doesn’t get a certain number of likes or comments. It’s sad really.

But, that is mostly something I struggled with in the past. Now I try my hardest to show others the benefits of loving yourself.

The idea of strangers is interesting to me because they are only strangers until you are familiar with them and knowing a small part of their big story. Strangers bring me happiness. Knowing that they have a life, ambitions and dreams, they have their own struggles and hardships, they have their own beliefs, they have people who have impacted their lives. Until you get to know them, you have know idea any of those things.

Once I sat in a coffee shop, skipping school because I was having a rough day, and a middle aged man walked through the door. He had a huge smile on his face and happily talked to the barista. He asked how she was. He was the kindest and happiest man. He walked out the door, and left an impact on me that he had no idea of. I wrote about it in my journal that night…

“i want to be the random person that brings light to someones day.“

You are always impacting someone, you don’t even know it. It’s your choice whether it be positive or negative. I hope you choose wisely.