I’m not that girl anymore

I’m not that girl anymore. And it made me wonder why I wasn’t. 

Some of you may remember during my most recent IG live that Shefali, Mira and their friends walked through the store on their way in from a photo shoot and out to enjoy Friday night life. They were dressed to the nines in incredible fashions that showed off their personal style and their young bodies.

I used to be those girls.

I had boundless energy. I wanted to go out and have fun and I was happy to show all the leg I have!

What happened? Well, I think it may have started with the shoes. I can’t wear heels anymore. My life is too busy for me to be tottering around, hoping that my feet can keep up with the rest of me.

And I’m running out of energy. It’s not boundless anymore so I have to choose how I use it. I can only allot so much of it to the act of starting my day dressed and ready to go.  

And…I don’t dress for other people anymore. Not to say that I was out to impress, it’s just that I wanted to be part of what everyone else was doing in fashion, so I played along by keeping up with trends that made me more acceptable. So people would feel comfortable with what they saw, even if they weren’t comfortable with who I was.  

So maybe the difference is that I am more comfortable with who I am. People can like what I wear or not and I am now old enough to realize that that what they think not a reflection of me, but of themselves. Only I can define myself.

I still love to look good. To put on a pair of earrings that make me feel special. To walk into a room know that I’m turning heads, but I think now that I’m older, I want to be turning heads because of my confidence in myself and because people can see that I know who I am. I finally don’t need to show other people what I think THEY want to see. (That one took a long time for me to figure out – why the heck do I think that I know what other people want to see?)

So many times I have heard that youth is wasted on the young. I’m happy not to be a youth anymore. I don’t want to still be figuring every single thing out about how I fit into the world and whether or not who I am is acceptable to other people. I don’t want to dress a certain way because I’m concerned about how other people will define me.

I’m proud to say I’m finally defining myself.

By Priya Mohan