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Defeat the Pressure to be Perfect

When I started writing down my story, I felt sick rereading the chapters where I first detailed how I coped with a broken heart. It took seeing my story from a distance that way, in black and white, on the page, to say stop. To see how I didn’t want to be that person any more. I closed my legs and I did the work and I learned how to be a little more okay with my imperfections. With my dark bits, as well as my lighter bits. Isn’t that everyone’s story? That we’re all learning how to accept who we are?

My story is one about sex and the body – and it’s one about feelings and the heart. Nobody else gets to decide what my history is. I got hurt, like a bagillion other people have been, and I had to figure out my shit, like a bagillion other people have. That’s not sickening and unworthy. That’s human.

I did the work, and I will never not reveal what that work looked like. I’m still learning, but I have learned enough to understand that you have to own what you’re ashamed of or else it owns you. My one won’t be deterred by the dirt under my fingernails. My one will thank me for it. My one will understand. The blokes that don’t understand, who don’t get what it took, they aren’t my one. The ones that don’t understand are another lesson learned, all in the name of what will be.
I don’t think it’s about “fake it ‘til you make it” so much as “geek out on whatever ever makes you the most you, you can be, and trust the process of it.”

New Year-life – isn’t, for me, about becoming a new person. New Year-life – is about becoming the person you already are, but hide away, because it can take an alarming amount of courage to be yourself in a world that tells you to be anything but. I was bullied in high school for my passion. For my hyperbole. For The Laura Show. I’ve been bullied by so-called friends in the years since. It took me ten years to stop apologizing for having a voice, and to understand I am entitled to the space I take up, along with the next person.

I don’t do New Year resolutions anymore, because I set monthly ones – it suits my short-sightedness better. But I do set an annual theme. 2013 was The Joy of Missing Out to combat my FOMO. 2014 was #StrongandSexy, as I prioritised my health. Last year I said, sit at the grown-up’s table. For 2016, my theme circled somewhere around Let It Scare You. Now looking ahead to 2017, I’m thinking my resolution will be to “take the adventure”!