Category: Overexposed: A Self-Love Project.

It was just a typical Wednesday morning during the first week of classes. Our office was busier than usual considering the Fall semester had just started a couple of days prior. I had got into this rhythm of getting to the office earlier than everyone else after getting used to working full-time hours. It was a normal Wednesday morning until my boss came in and walked into her office, signed onto her computer, and called my name as soon as she sat down at her desk. I walked into her office and told me that all of the paperwork needed for my full-time position was approved and that I was now officially resigning my College Assistant line as of today.

Hi, my name is Liz, and August 29th, 2023 was the day that ultimately changed my life for the better.

Professionally, I was excited that I accomplished one of my goals before turning 30 just a couple of months later: be hired full-time. It was about time that I did what I needed to do in order to get a full-time position. The only thing that was holding me back was the fact that I really enjoyed the office I was working in, and the college legit was like a second home to me. It was hard to get full-time at a place that wasn’t openly offering it, so when I got the opportunity to have a line created for me in the office, of course I wanted to take it. After 8 months of constant updates and paperwork needing to be filled out, I was finally getting the full-time position I wanted. My first day as an aHEO (Assistant to Higher Education Officer) was literally spent writing my resignation letter as a College Assistant. A year later, and I am now permanently hired as an aHEO. I don’t just have a job anymore; I now have a career.

Being hired full-time in an environment that supported me and fought for me to stay in their office made me feel like I was an important piece of the puzzle in this unit. When I first started my job as a CA, it took me a couple of months to even feel secure enough to do simple tasks without asking dumb questions. Even when I was offered this full-time position at the time, I was nervous to finally carry a role that came with a responsibility that I felt like I wasn’t deserving of. Even now I deal with some level of impostor syndrome because of the higher title, but it has gotten better with experience and with time.

Something changed in me when I got hired full-time though. It was like I gained this level of confidence that I didn’t have before, as well as gain some certainty and security regarding my future. That following night after work, I went out and celebrated with my partner on possibly the most beautiful night of the entire summer. Looking back at that day now, everything else in my life began to come into place, and since then… well, I’ve been the happiest I’ve ever been in my life.

I don’t know where I would’ve been right now if I had not taken the opportunity when it came. I would’ve probably been some COA at some other college, going through all of the steps again just to find my sense in belong. Who knows; I might’ve still been in the same office working part-time, thinking about whether or not I should leave to go find full-time work elsewhere. I think a apart of me believes that once I got this position, I felt like I was able to plan other parts of my life out in a way. This position is secured for life; no matter what I will always have my job unless I decided to leave out of the company altogether. Because I felt secured professionally, I began to view other parts of my life in the same lens. Once I knew that I needed to feel that same level of security with myself as a person, everything else would fall into place.

Of course, not everything is black and white and not everything that I deal with falls in that umbrella of security. There’s always going to be things out of my control. I’m learning that I only have control in the things I know I have control over, like my thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and even the way I problem solve. I’ve wrote a blog post a couple of months ago that I needed to set boundaries with myself in the same sense I would to people that were toxic for my well-being; that still reigns true as I get older and discover that there are beliefs and actions I have to unlearn as a adult in society. Not everything is going to look like how it did for us in the way it did when our parents were growing up, and not everything is going to be concrete and solvable when you want them to be.

In a sense, I’ve learned a lot about how time works. I’ve learned that while yes, you shouldn’t wait for things to come to you if you really want them, I’ve learned that they will come to you as time passes without you even knowing. A lot of the things I’ve wanted to happen have happen not only because I’ve remain persistent in obtaining them, but I also allowed time to help me grow as a person and to mature in ways in order to handle the things I wanted out of life.

I’ve waited nearly a year to be permanently hired in this position, and God knows where it will take me this time next year. This time last year, I had no idea how to be a person in my position and felt completely unworthy of it when there were other people in the office that worked there even when I was a student myself. I had no idea where this position would take me or how it would differ to what I was doing as a CA, but I’ve allowed time to help me grow into it, and feel that sense of belonging that… well… I guess I always am looking for in life.

I don’t know where the rest of my career is heading, but I am excited to see what the future has in store for me. Now that I am hired permanently in my position, I now have some things that I can start focusing on, like potentially returning to school to get my doctorate degree.

Happy anniversary to the day that change my life for the better; here’s to many more.

Dear Summer 2024,

As always, you teach us just how fast time can pass. It feels like it was just yesterday we were putting our light jackets and sweaters in our closets and taking out our swimsuits for the season. It feels like it was just yesterday we were telling our students and faculty to have a great summer. It feels like it was just yesterday that I was planning and looking forward to all of the things I had planned for the season. But just like time, it finally came, we experienced it, and now it’s a memory.

For me, I started off my summer checking another K-pop group off of my list to see live in concert. For context, I was actually really nervous at first to go to a TXT (Tomorrow X Together) concert considering that they are one of the more popular K-pop groups in the industry, and K-pop stans can really be intense. Needless to say, I was really excited to see these guys live, and they did not disappoint! Sure, the K-pop industry is currently saturated with different groups as the genre becomes more westernized, but there are a select few that really know how to put on a performance; TXT being one of those at the top of that list! It was also the first concert I went to that I nearly lost my voice at, which wasn’t surprising at all.

I spent my afternoons this summer going out to eat and getting drinks; particularly to celebrate the accomplishments and blessings that were coming our way. This summer, I finally got my notary license after passing the test earlier this year, and I was now further getting into the process of being hired permanently at my job, and my partner released his first ever music video to one of his original tracks! In hindsight, I saw just how different celebrations are in your 30s. For me, celebrations in my 20s were always clouded by this self-hatred and doubt I had for myself because I never felt I was deserving enough to have the things I actually worked hard for. Maturing made me realize that time simply passes by too fast to not celebrate these accomplishments, no matter how small they may be to everyone else. Yes, I’m going to celebrate the fact that I aced this second job interview after nearly stressing out about it for two weeks straight. Yes, I’m going to celebrate the fact that I got my Notary license after studying non-stop for a month straight, thinking I failed. Yes, I am also to celebrate the people around me and their accomplishments, because everyone deserves to be recognized for them as they also worked hard to achieve them.

Summer 2024 was also the first time I was able to go on a summer vacation! My partner and I went away to Atlantic City in July; it was my first time ever going to the place that nearly every person within the five boroughs has gone to. Despite me getting sick during our vacation, I had such a good time walking the boardwalk, going to the casino to win a little bit of money, getting drinks in The Quarter, and going to the outlets where we shopped ’til we dropped. It was a well needed vacation after months of working and nearly burning out because of it. I came back refreshed and recharged, ready to tackle the Fall semester that was to come.

One thing about the trip that stood out to me the most was when we were in our hotel room, relaxing after having dinner one night. We were watching all the 90s/00s sitcoms; this particular hour they played Girlfriends. Tracee Ellis Ross’ character, Joan, was experiencing a huge shift in her life; she had left her current job and broke up with her serious long-term boyfriend. She chats with her younger co-worker, who is very serious about her hot-dog food court job, about having set up these expectations for herself that nearly make up her identity. She sits her down and tells her, “Trust me, you don’t want to be 32 and never stopped to smell the roses.” Both my partner and I looked at the TV and said “Whoa”. It was real. It made me realize that this summer was truly about enjoying the simple things in life and learning how to slow down, even when time doesn’t.

This summer not only marked my one-year anniversary being in this full-time position, but it also was the marking of actually being hired permanently into it! For the last year, I was on a temporary line of the position, awaiting for HR to put together the listing for that I could officially apply for the position. After months of resume building and various job interviews that caused an acne breakout throughout the entirety of June, I was given the official news that I was being hired officially in my position! This upcoming academic year will be the first in where I am completely working in this role, so I’m a little nervous about the transition. Nevertheless, I am excited to finally be secure professionally; now it’s time to cross some other things off of my bucket list.

It was great while it lasted, Summer 2024; thank you for the memories and for allowing me to see just how important it was to enjoy the summer; both celebrating the accomplishments I worked hard for and taking some time to slow down and simply live.

Until next summer.

Picture this: It’s January 8th, 2024 around 11pm-ish living your last half hour in your 20’s. You reminisce about the last decade; every milestone you hit, every heartbreak you experienced, every defining moment that makes up your identity. I was very local about my 20s specifically; most of it has been documented in almost 1,000 blog posts in the course of 7 years. So now it finally hits midnight; it’s January 9th, 2024, which now makes you 30 years old. You take a deep breath in and turn off your bedroom light for the night: welcome to another year of life, and the first of your fuckin’ 30s.

Fast forward and it’s now June 27th, 2024 (hypothetically speaking if you know my blog posting habits) and you let out that same deep breath. Only this time, it’s followed by a, “goddamn, it’s already gonna be July?!”

Hi, my name is Liz, this is my mid-year self-aware check-up post as we are nearing the middle of the fucking 2024 year. That’s crazy, y’all.

I started off the year going to California to celebrate my 30th birthday. I was so excited to scratch of another place off of my bucket list to travel to. It was the first time on a flight across the country, landing in a different time-zone than my own back in NYC. That particular trip kickstarted is whole want to travel more and see different places. Of course there was no place like home, but I also knew when it was time to get out of the city and go to a different one. This summer, I’m planning on taking another trip! This time, it will be some place along the east coast; something local. As the time I am typing this, nothing is set in stone yet, but of course once everything comes together, pictures will be taken and a travel diary will be written for the blog!

In February, my sibling and I went to go see Chicago on Broadway, of course when Ariana Madix was Roxie Hart! I’m a big Vanderpump Rules fan and Ariana has been a fan favorite since the beginning of her run on the show. She was amazing, so amazing that she even got called back to do the show again in August. Needless to say, this was our first Broadway show in about 17 years; it was a nice change from the loud concerts I attended last year… although I’m literally going to a concert within weeks of me writing this.

Speaking of going out, I (successfully, kinda) went to another party! Back in April, I was invited to Obie’s “Back to the 90’s” party, and I (successfully) did not have an anxiety attack. Of course, whenever I go into these type of settings, I am constantly judging myself and thinking about ways to improve in the future… that’s where the ‘kinda’ part comes in. Don’t get me wrong; I’ve come a long way since being 22-years-old nearly crying my eyes out of its sockets after being at a birthday party with no coping mechanisms whatsoever. I simply now have goals when going into any social gathering, which is just being myself as much as possible.

I’ve learned that I don’t need to get up and dance with a random stranger just to have a good time; instead, I can sit in my seat and dance along to the music and fill up my social cup with just that. I don’t need to mingle and make myself socially available in a party if I know that my battery quickly drains. I’ve learned a lot about myself just by going out and being around more people these days, and I think with more practice and using better techniques to get through a social setting, I will be able to actually walk out of a party having had a good time. I don’t want to have to think my every move; parties are meant to be fun, not work. But again, I am proud of how far I’ve come, as past versions of myself would have not gone out of her way to do. These days, I tag along to studio sessions and witness music tracks being made. These days, I walk around the Downtown neighborhood and stop at a happy hour after a long day at work. I feel like I am embracing my social life more than I ever did in my 20s, whihc isn’t too far off from my “late bloomer” brand.

On top of everything that I’m doing in my social life, I am also working towards growing as a professional. Late last year, I decided that I wanted to go back to school to pursue getting my doctorate degree once I settled into my current position at my job. While that is more of a long term goal, one of my short term goals was to take the Notary Public Exam and pass it to get my license. I spent most of March and April solely studying for this exam, and ya girl passed! It was a nice add-on to my ongoing quest of becoming a more well-rounded professional in the field I work in. It was nice to know that my workplace has supported me through the various processes in my professional development. Having set goals like growing professionally allows me to focus my energy and my task-driven brain towards something that will benefit me in the long-run. No more of the day that I would think mindlessly without any real reasoning behind it.

Mentally, I’ve been pretty good this year (so far). Of course, I am naturally dealing with things that just come with my age: needing more independence on the things that I don’t already have, unlearning some of the behaviors and beliefs that we as children were embedded to think and believe, and in a general sense of what my 3rd decade of my life looks like. I already feel like it’s drastically different than my 20s, and I am hoping that I continue to better myself in different aspects of it: socially, professionally, liz-ally.

Some things I am looking forward to as I write this: my first concert of 2024! By the time this is posted, I would have gone, but I am going to see Tomorrow X Together (TXT) in the city this June! Of course, I am nervous to attend such a huge K-pop concert like theirs, but I am more than excited to cross another artist off of the list I am looking to see live in concert. Some concerts I’ve gone to in the past include Kelly Clarkson, Pentatonix, ITZY, Demi Lovato, NMIXX, Jonas Brothers, and Woodz; a nice little list of people, might I add. I’m also going to take the well-needed PTO and go on vacation this summer. I’m hoping all of our plans go as planned, but needless to say I am just excited to do something during the summer since I haven’t done anything super Summer vacation-like in God knows how long. All I know is that I want to be in someone’s bar with a drink in hand and sunglasses on.

And I think that’s it! I guess check back in December (Twelve Letters of Lizmas, even?) to see how the latter part of the year went! Haha!

Until then!

I am a woman dressed in fun, bright colors. The color of the flowers on my pants match the clips I have in my hair. My glasses are rainbow on the days where my wardrobe is feeling more monotone and black in order to add some color in my outfit. My side of the bedroom is filled with different patterns and waves of various complimentary colors; a huge stuffed animal sits on top of my desk and a gold, feathery boa sits on top of the signed K-pop albums of my all-time favorite boy group.

If you could only judge me from what my safe space felt like, you’d think I was a college student a best, or perhaps a high-school teenager whose just about to graduate.

Or, you would even joke around and say, “man, this feels like a grown ass woman who was a kid/teen in the 2000’s and never grew up from it…

… Hi, my name is Liz, and I am that person who was a kid/teen in the 2000’s whose style screams “millennial teen”.

I have this distinctive memory of watching my older sibling’s home video of their first birthday party at a McDonalds in South Brooklyn; the year is 1991. I, for sure, was not even a thought (as I was born four years after my sibling) but it was interesting to see what how most people in their late 20s/early 30s dressed and acted like. Many of these people wore what was in style of that time, but everything made them seem so much older than they were. No one was wearing crazy patterns and vivid colors, and their hair was styled in ways that added a couple of years onto these young adults. I mean, it seemed like back in the day everyone looked like they were their appropriate age; even older than what you thought.

Nowadays, it’s different. You have the millennials not really conforming to the adult norms that we grew up watching our parents be. Many of us are not mothers by the time we hit our 30s. Many of us are not married and if we are, we most likely got married at City Hall did not have a luxury wedding ceremony to celebrate love the way we saw adults do it. Many of us are still living at home with our parents for more complicated reasons than just “rent being too damn high.” It seems like a lot of the things our parents and our parents’ parents did are not what we are doing.

Millennials, in a nutshell, are growing up in an unconventional way. Although we are maturing and are now faced with more adult-like conflicts and situations, we are still into the things that we were in when we were younger. Maybe it’s the fact that a lot of us grew up wanting the things we liked but couldn’t get, so we now get them with our own money we made from our adult jobs.

For me, my 20s consisted of me collecting K-pop albums and photocards and calling it a collection. Once I started to make my own money, I wanted to do things with it that I couldn’t do in my younger years. I began dressing the way I wanted to dress and decorate my safe space the way I wanted to, and I’m always gravitating more towards the colorful, or “youthful” things. As I’ve gotten older, I feel like I’ve embraced more of this side and it’s not because I’m trying to “hold on” to my youth. I’ve grown to embrace the things I simply like whether or not they fit into the societal norms of what a 30-year-old should like. A part of discovering and defining what identity looked like on me was realizing that there is never a right way to do things, and there is never a set of interests and hobbies that you need to have taken away from you when you reach a certain age in life. To go full circle, I had to unlearn all these expectations that life has set you up for: you don’t need to leave color behind in your younger years, you don’t need to settle down and find love once you’re out of college and in your mid-20s (yes, I am talking about you 18-year-old Liz who thought we were going to be married by the time we turned 26), and most important of them all, you don’t have to feel guilty of not wanting to have children and become a mother even if biologically time is telling you that you should do so.

While others may judge our generation for being “immature” and not “growing up” fail to realize that our generation was raised in such a transformative time. We were not strictly born in the area of technology, but we also were not raised prior to technology becoming such a universal resource and everyday essential. Sure, we may have tons of diagnosed mental illnesses in our generation and lack the social skills that our parents and grandparents tend to have, but we are so self-aware and are able to self-identify what it is that we need to nourish our soul and our bodies that we simply do not care if society judges us for not being “adult enough” compared to generations before us. I’m talking to you too, my Gen Z readers; you may judge older generations for being a certain way until you one day grow up and realize that what we are telling you is pretty much the same shit that older generations told us…

“Don’t grow up too fast. Cherish your youth as each day you are one day older than the last.”

I am proud of us as a generation for the way we are growing into our adult lives. I am proud that we can cherish what our youth was and still embrace those parts into our adulthood. I am proud that we literally said “why grow up to be miserable and monotone when we can grow up and still be the same person?” I am proud that as a generation, we are bending the rules in what it means to be an adult, not because we are lazy or afraid to grow up, but because we want to be happy in a world where things get dark if you look at it for too long. We grew up watching the adults lose their spark as they got older; we simply do what our fate to be a repetition of that.

So, yes; call me weird and eccentric and colorful and comment about how when you were my age, adults did not behave in such way. Yes, look at me and laugh with your teenage friends and poke fun of the fact that I may not be wearing what is appropriate for an “adult in their middle age”. Yes, ask me why do I still like the things that you thought I should’ve now grown out of as an 30-year-old adult.

I am simply being myself is what I’ll say.

If you follow me on my personal account on Instagram, you will notice how unserious I am about posting on the platform. Sure, my pictures are edited to fit a certain vibe that I’m going for, but once you click on that highlighted circle around my profile picture, you will see just how stupid and silly I can be. One hour, I could post something relatable about my job; the next hour I could post myself blasting music in my house and dancing along to the song.

You could almost say that I am a completely different person on the internet. Not a catfish, but maybe like a personality catfish.

I say that because in person, I’m not as outgoing as I seem to be on social media. I am pretty reserved in person; I get nervous talking to people in general, I don’t say much when I’m in a crowd, and like any person with any level of social anxiety, I am constantly thinking about the things I shouldn’t do or say for the sake of people judging me or making fun of me.

It’s a very backwards ideology: to not give a shit about what people think or say on the internet when I’m being my authentic self versus being self-conscious in person because I’m afraid of people seeing me in a weird or negative light, right? Well, it’s much simpler than you think.

Hi, my name is Liz, and my own personal ‘boss battle’ of life is unapologetically being myself in real life.

For most of my 2os, I fought myself a ton when it came to finding my identity and embracing what it looked like on me. From being just a student to then being a person in society to being a a part of various online communities, I spent the last decade really trying to figure out what it was that I wanted out of life and for myself. Now just starting my 30s, I have a better idea on the things that feeds my soul ad what truly makes me happy as a person.

I know that I like my alone time. I like to be my own company, I like to take on projects by myself, and possibly the most odd thing of them all is that I prefer to go to events (like concerts) buy myself. I’ve accepted the fact that for the most part I am very introverted, but I also can’t help the fact that I tend to have these extroverted tendencies. What I mean by that is that at a party, I want to get up from my seat and dance to the music playing. When I’m in a circle of people that I am comfortable being in, I want to be more vocal and speak out in conversation. It’s like I am introverted by nature, but my personality is more extroverted.

I can’t help but feel insecure whenever I feel like my introverted side traps me inside this box. Am I a drag to be around because I don’t say much in conversation or if I’m terribly shy? Do people feel awkward around me when I feel awkward in a social setting? If I decide to do something that is outside of my normal introverted nature, will people looks at me differently or judge me for doing something they normally wouldn’t see me do? All these things roam around in my head whenever I am in a social setting, so I tend to force myself to be the version that society knows me as. Quiet. Shy. Let other people speak for me. Sometimes awkward as fuck.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I want to finally allow myself to be the person I am behind closed doors. I want to show people how funny I can be, how silly and random and carefree that I am while giving a shit that I may be weird or over the top. I think back to the girl I was growing up in the late 90s and early 2000s: Always outgoing and talking to everyone, being my true self and not caring about those poking fun at me and if they did, I addressed it. I think back to my younger self a lot when I think about my potential to be more outgoing in real life; I even look up to my childhood self for inspiration to do so.

I guess this is ultimately what I consider my video game “boss battle” of life. I still have to level up in my skills in order to enter this battle stage as ready as I can be. I still have all these side quests that need to be completed that will teach me new techniques and moves to use once I enter the boss battle. Yes, I will fail and yes, each heart I lose in the process will make me weary about even trying again afterwards, but with enough practice and understanding of the different levels, I will be able to finally get to that boss battle. In this sense, I still have to put myself out there in ways that will make me uncomfortable at first. I still have to try and fail and learn different ways to get past this belief that my authentic self is “too much” for people to see. I still have to challenge myself in smaller settings and give myself side tasks to accomplish in order to conquer the boss battle task. I will have tons of work to do in hopes that I will one day be okay with showing my extroverted side to other people outside of the internet.

I remember growing up watching The King of Queens on broadcast television because my family couldn’t afford cable. Doug and Carrie Heffernan (played by Kevin James and Leah Remini) live in a 3-bathroom house in Queens, New York in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s. Towards the beginning of the series, there’s an episode where Carrie is dreading to be turning 30, as it’s deemed as “being washed out and old” and “one step closer to your grave”. Me, being an 11 year old with no sense of age or time, laughed and thought, “wow, I should be married and living in a house before I turn 30!”

Here I am, now 30-years-old myself, not being or having any of these things… oh, and hi; my name is Liz.

I knew I was not going to enter my 30s with all of these things that are deemed as adult milestones. For one, I had spent most of my twenties still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do in life. I was exploring what my identity was after not truly having one in my early 20s. I was busy in college and then went straight into grad school without taking any breaks to explore who I was outside of being a student. By the time I was done with my studies, I was a 24-year-old woman just beginning to see what my place was in this society. To be quite frank; I was not anywhere near having my shit together by my mid-20s to enter my 30s with all these adult milestones.

Some people chose to get married and/or have kids in their 20s. Some people chose to go away for college and then moved away from home once they graduated. Some people moved out of their family’s house on their own, whether it was with friends they knew, their partner, or with a couple of random roommates. But, some people choose to go against these milestones due to many external factors. For me, I just had other plans for my adulthood.

I knew from a young age that children wasn’t going to be something I wanted for myself in adulthood. I didn’t (and still don’t) see myself being a mother, and as I got older the pressure of becoming one or “starting my own family” was now something others were concerned about for me. In all honesty; I still have that mindset that if anyone my age is having kids, it feels like it’s a teen pregnancy.

I know I am getting older and that my generation is now at that place in life that we’re getting married and we’re having kids and we are building our lives as we continue on our adulthood journeys. We get excited over the things that our parents got excited for like home decor and cleaning supplies. We’ve become those adults that roll their eyes at the teenagers commuting to and from school on public transportation. Also, we are now victims of our childhoods now being considered “vintage”.

The pressure of getting older, for me, is the constant reminder that while time waits for no one, you shouldn’t also jump into doing things because of how quickly time passes by. That sounds complicated, but in simpler terms; I am afraid that when I’m ready to hit these adult milestones it will be too late. For context; I am now that the age where the chances of having children begin to decline as I get older, but I cannot stay that children are in my current 5-year plan. I also cannot say that I’ll be living on my own anytime soon or be in a serious relationship that will lead to marriage; but I’ve learn that if these things are meant to be for me, they will happen when it’s time.

Going into my 30s, I worried about this time feeling like my “deadline” age, but now actually being 30, I feel differently. I feel like this is just the beginning of my adulthood. I feel like I am at the tutorial phase of a new game, learning the basic functions of what adulthood is like. As I get further into my 30s, I will take what I’m learning and apply that towards the rest of my adulthood, y’know? Life is honestly just a long play-through of a game, in my opinion.

I’m looking forward for all of the experiences I’m still left to have in my 30s. I am looking forward to travel to more places, attend more concerts, and continue to cross things off my bucket list. One piece of life advice I am taking from those older than me is simply to do everything I want to do before I decide to hit the adult milestones in my life. I like where I am currently; I feel like I am currently at the place where I’m learning who I am as an adult and what it looks like on me. I am currently building my professional career in higher education and taking opportunities as much as I can to further (and better) myself for the future. In the meantime, I am learning to balance my professional life and personal life by completely separating the two; work on projects and take on tasks at my job, but hit up a happy hour with my partner and his friends after work. I am learning to approach life in a “slow burn” type of way as a person whose mind is constantly on a race (that’s another blog post for another day).

For me, I’m taking turning 30 as being the first page of a new book in my life. I am leaving all of my baggage from my 20s in my 20s, and anything that challenged me or flawed me is now just a lesson that I’ve learned and experience that I’ve gained. For me, 30 is like meeting a new person: the other person doesn’t know anything that you’ve done, went through, or who you once were in your past; they only know the person that you are right now.

You read that right, readers. This topic doesn’t need a grandiose explanation.

Hi, my name is Liz, and I am the queen of blocking people on social media.

In this day and age, social media is such a major part of our lives, which means we need to work with it in a way that best suits our needs. Because of social media, I was able to partake in a couple of communities and engage with all sorts of people with the same interests as me. Because of social media, I am able to connect with people on such a low stakes level: as someone with social anxiety, I use social media as my “social blanket” to communicate with those I would not call my IRL friends. Also, social media has shown us in recent years (the pandemic ones) that it can hold space for different types of productivity, like remote work and remote learning.

But, we are all aware of the problem social media has created. It has become its own sort of reality. You can be one person in real life, but become a completely different person online and create this false narrative of yourself to appeal to others for likes and views. People assume the lives of people just by checking their social media posts and status, not realizing that we choose what we want people to see and we choose what type of audience we want to attract. Then there’s social media content creators and influencers, but this post is about your average Joe that just scrolls social media and shit.

Because of there being such a fine line between reality and “social media world”, the internet as a whole can be as toxic and damaging as any hardcore drug or alcohol out there. It can truly be a silent way to harm your mental health if you allow it to.

For years, I’ve allowed social media to take over by life because my presence was once solely online. I did not like to go outside, I was trying to see what social anxiety looked like on me, and I was trying to find my identity as a young adult. I thought as I got older and began to heal, these social media habits of mine would go away, like checking someone’s public page that I didn’t like or had a falling out with, being nosy and seeing the type of people they associate themselves with, and yes, creating my own narrative of these people to convince myself I was doing better without them.

Of course, these are my toxic traits too: being curious and nosy about things that really had nothing to do with me. I didn’t realize this until I stumbled upon something on social media that altered the way I behaved and treated people involved in this person’s life. Life lesson #5,183: Don’t snoop around for something if you are. Or ready to be confronted with that said-something.

That’s when I started to block everyone I did not want to see floating around on mutual friend’s profiles, your “People You May Know” section, and generally wanted to pretend they don’t exist in my world.

“But Liz, you’re 30 years old; only childish people block people on social media…”

No. Selfish people block people on social media; I am a selfish person.

I am selfish with the amount of access people have for me because not everyone was once in my life is deserving to see where I’m at now. That’s not me saying I’m the shit and all of that, that’s me saying that the people who once knew me as an older version of myself and has passed judgment towards my newer versions, then why should they have access to who am I now? Why should I let these people have viewing rights of photos that have documented my growth, achievements, and life if they have no interest in getting to know me or befriend the person I am now? I always say this as a joke, but this does have some truth behind it: “you wanna see what I’ve been up to? Read my blog.”

Blocking people on social media is the easiest part. Most of us block people in the height of our anger and do it to regain some control of the spiraling situation… but many of us tend to unblock just to look up these people and see what they’ve been up to since. I was one of them! After doing so for the umpteenth time since being on social media, I really had to sit back and ask myself if I was purposely setting myself up for failure or if I really wanted to fuck up my mood for the day. What good is this doing you, Liz? You know the adrenaline rush wears off once you get on that person’s page, but then what? Do you actually feel better in the end? The answer is no.

So yes; I am a selfish person. I am selfish with myself and the way I distribute myself to other people these days. I am not easily controllable or obtainable in the way I was when I was younger. I am not afraid to cut ties with people I feel no longer make me feel good or help me grow as a friend. I am not putting other people’s immediate needs before my own. I am not stripping myself of good mental health just so that I am looked at as being a “caring and thoughtful person”. Once you unlearn the negative connotation behind being “selfish” and what it truly means to be selfish, you’ll learn how to balance being there for your loved ones, but being there for yourself in the same way.

Do yourself a favor: block that person that’s hindering you from healing. I promise, you are doing the right thing.

POV: It’s the mid-to-late 2000’s and you’re entering your teenage years. Hormones are at their highest, and your perspective on love is based off of teen-romance movies and TV shows where everything almost works out for the girl who crushes on the guy… because he is also crushing on her back.

But what you don’t realize is that you’re an overweight teenager, and most (if not all) of these movies and TV shows are about people who are attractive to society standards. The fat girl or guy was always the sidekick, the best friend, the one who didn’t need a man or woman because media could not (and would not) depict a fat person falling in love with someone that didn’t screw them over or pity them as a joke.

So, you grow up thinking that no one can possibly like you for how you look or if they do like you, only like you because it’s some bet or prank they are playing; you know, like they do in those movies. All the boys you ever liked were always into skinny girls, or “socially acceptable plus-size” girls; if you had a hanging stomach and somewhat of a double chin, you did not qualify to be liked by other people in a romantic aspect.

As you get older, you learn that there are people that do like bigger girls; weight was just a number on a scale to some people and truly liked people for who they were as people on the inside. But now it’s too late; you grew up in the generation that taught us that fat people were incapable of finding love without their crush having interior motives, or having fetishes of being with a fat person. Of course, there is always a side of this insecurity with every body type, but for the sake of my experience, this is about what dating and love and relationships look like from a fat girl’s perspective.

Even when you found someone who loves your body for what it is and even when you start accepting yourself in the body you carry, you still feel this desire to have a body that looks socially acceptable. You wanted to know how it felt like to casually go out shopping in a store and find something “plus sized” that actually fits your plus-sized body. You wanted to know how it felt to follow the trends but literally couldn’t because everything that was your size was either out of style or meant for middle-aged women. At the end of the day, you just wanted to feel like your body was accepted, desired, and seen.

I was over 300 pounds going into gastric bypass surgery back in 2021 and did it to feel physically better. Of course, losing weight made me feel better mentally too, but as the months (and years) passed by, I began to question if the body I had now was even “good enough”. For awhile, I experienced some sort of body dysmorphia and not completely feeling like my body was even my own to claim and accept. In some instances, I began to compare my body now and the body I once has, comparing the differences in it.

“When you were bigger, you had a bigger butt and bigger boobs; something that you were once confident about. Now, your body sags from the excess skin, you’re flat-chested, and your butt is small.”

Such great self-love talk, huh?

I had to learn (and accept) that as a society, we aren’t ever going to feel like we’re good enough, yet alone enough. Growing up in the generation where being super skinny was in and celebrities were constantly encouraging viewers to join weight loss programs, it’s hard to feel like we have our place in society, even if it has more of a progressive perspective. Also, as a person who’s been fat her entire life, its hard to unlearn these ideologies about appearance and vanity.

So, the only thing you can do is fake it until you make it.

“Faking it Until You Make It” has always been one of those things that you were told to do in order to get to places you wanted to be. It didn’t mean that you had to fake who you were and the authenticity you have; you simply needed to act like you have the confidence to take on the tasks at hand. For example, your job. Maybe you lack the social skills to work in retail, but to get through the day meant you had to put on your “retail” voice and use the knowledge you have about your job to successfully interact with customers. In society, you have to act like you have the confidence in your style, personality, and appearance in order to feel accepted within society’s standards. You have to act like you are the shit, and you have to tell yourself that there is no one else just like you in the universe because you have style, personality and an appearance that is uniquely yours. Once you feel like you are bending the standards society has set, you stop caring about what other people think of you and you start to not engage in negative self-talk as much as you used to.

This mindset doesn’t come easy, and there are still days that I feel like I was “prettier” when I was bigger. Being one thing for the majority of your life, it’s hard to not compare the last couple of years where I lost all this weight and be mentally confident in my image. This mindset challenged the things I believed me and the type of behaviors I indulged in because of my mental health; I legit had to treat my toxic traits like an external person, handling it the way I would with external beings. That’s a different story for a different day.

POV: You’re now in your 30’s, learning to love yourself in the ways you should have when you were younger, and because of that, you make it your life’s mission to nurture the various young versions of yourself, because you know that all versions of you deserve to have felt loved even when society told you you were not worthy of it.

I hear it from older generations all the time; people these days do not know how to socialize the way that they did when they were our age. I agree with them even though they are talking about my generation and the one after mine. I can’t speak for Gen Z, but I can say that for us millennials, we were on the right track of knowing how to socialize; that was until the internet and social media blew up. I can remember being a young teenager having to make the effort to pick up the landline phone and speak over the phone if I wanted to talk to my friends. I had to actually make plans verbally with people and let them know this is where we were meeting up because once we left our house, we had no way to get in contact with our friends. I can honestly say that when I was younger, I felt like I was on the right track of being a social butterfly; these days not so much.

Do I blame the internet and social media for my demise of being social? No. For me, my lack of social skills stems from a place of trauma and only dealing with it way after it actually affected my skills and ability to be social. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not this person that just sits at their computer all day and writes other people’s stories because mine is too boring to tell. I still interact with tons of people and able to speak to people (sometimes, when I’m feeling confident) but for me as a person, I find myself being the best version of myself when I am in my own company, being my own best friend.

Hi, my name is Liz, and socially I’m alone, but I am not a lonely person. Does that make sense? Lemme explain.

I guess this topic is coming up from me because this time last year, I lost the only friend group I had since probably being back in high school. Yes, this friend group were consisted of people I never met in person and that I met online through a community, but it didn’t change the fact that I shared a ton of my life with these people and considered them just as much as my friends I would have in-person. Losing that friend group completely made me question a ton of stuff about myself and who I was as a person. Why was I so quick to cut people out of my lives when something like this could’ve been discussed and avoided? This seems to be the question that a lot of people who are social and have tons of friends would ask those who tend to cut ties quickly, and they are right; how come it is so easy for us these days to cut ties with people that we put our trust and care into when one thing goes wrong? Why is it so hard for us to sit down and have these difficult conversations with those we love when they hurt us or if we hurt them?

I can’t speak for anyone else when I say this, but for me I would talk things out with people in situations that I knew needed to end right then and there. I used to hoarder people in my life to the point that eventually I learned that it hurt me more to hold on than to let go in the end. For me, once I began practicing self-worth and assertiveness, I lost my ability to have these tough conversations with people, and at the end of the it all, I was back to square one.

Our generation specifically have been smothered in this idea that you are the best version of yourself when you make decisions that benefit your well being. It’s not a stupid ideology; we are the generation that began to have these conversations about mental health and just how important it was to take care of it. But, we have took that ideology to the extremes when it comes to interacting with other people, whether it be romantic or platonic.

Losing a friend group as an adult is so different than losing one as a teenager. As an adult, there’s no one fighting for your friendship the way we did as teens and as an adult, no one has the time to sit back and reflect how their actions may have affected you. We’re too busy living life as full-grown adults, trying to make it day by day in it. So when we cut people out of our lives due to anger and emotional distress, we don’t realize that these temporary feelings lead to permanent decisions. Then we end up alone.

So, am I going on this tangent because I regret my decision of cutting ties with my friends in my past? No. I made the best decision that I thought was best in the heat of the moment, when I was crying in my break room at the job on an emergency therapy appointment because I felt incapable of continuing my day. Everyone has their reasons of why they cut ties with people, but at the end of the day, we have to realize that if we aren’t able to be our own company, sit in our own thoughts, and learn how to be our own damn best friend, reconsider your options.

For me, I am used to be alone socially. I don’t have friends I see every weekend and go out with. I don’t have friends to vent to when I am feeling angry or depressed about a situation. I cannot name 5 people that I consider my friends that I can confidently say that if I were to ever get married, would be a part of my bridal party. is it sad? Of course. Someone in their 30s should have a solid group of people they see or talk to regularly, but for me it’s not a priority because, well, I am the best version of myself when I’m by myself.

“Oh, but that must be a lonely feeling to constantly have.”

I am not lonely. I have family that I live with and talk to every single day. I have coworkers I see five days a week and talk to when we get the chance. I have acquaintances that will comment and reply to a story on social media, sparking up conversation. I have a pretty awesome partner that I get to laugh and have fun with. I have my creativity and my writing universes that nurture me as a person. I have myself.

And that’s okay with me.