random rambles// being confident and stuff

hi welcome to another edition to my ever growing "series" of random rambles!!

i love these posts because they are just a brain dump for me, i feel weight lifted off my shoulders when i post these. also, my website stats show me that my "random rambles" posts get a TON of views. all of my most viewed posts are random rambles lol. so i guess that could be good or bad. but anyways! today i have quite a few things on my mind. lettuce begin!

for the first time in maybe forever?? i am not sure. but for the first time in a long time, i am truly happy and confident in who i am. its so refreshing. ive learned to love who God created me to be recently. i feel happy. i dont feel pressured into being like anyone else, or hate any one part of who i am. im not saying im perfect, not by any means. but there is a peace. ive accepted the fact that im always growing, learning at my own pace. and there can be joy found in that, i think. i used to hate literally everything about myself. i would look in the mirror and cry and cry and cry. i hated my hair, i hated my freckles, i hated my body, i hated my nose, i hated my smile, i hated my hands, i hated everything about the way i looked. i thought i was plain, i thought i needed makeup to look "okay". and even worse than that, i hated who i was, inwardly. i hated the way i thought, i hated my sense of humor. i hated my many weird laughs, i hated the fact that my nose always seemed to itch, i hated my voice. it was so incredibly destructive, and looking back i dont even know why. i dont know how i couldnt tell how unhealthy my behavior was. when i was about 13 or 14 i tried to eat a few hundred calories a day to lose weight. i wore baggy clothes to hide my body because i was so ashamed to own it. i was self conscious constantly. i tried really really hard to be like other girls, talk the way they talked, wear what they wore, laugh at what they thought was funny.

but there were a few people i let see the real me. of course, my family. i didnt hold back my silly laughs and sense of humor around them. some of my best friends saw me for who i was. people that i trusted enough to not judge me...people that to this day i love more than my heart can even handle. i think that those people are amazing, for seeing little 11 year old penelope and deciding to love her even though she didnt know how to love herself.

2018 helped. sounds crazy but it did. all of the heartache, all of the losing, all of the depression and sorrow deeper than anything i had ever known...it helped. it made me forget about myself and focus on others. and slowly all of the trying to be different and the defenses i put up to keep people out, they melted. and i couldnt even try to care. there were so many trials that i was stripped of my self loathing.

this is so long...but basically.

i started realizing that when i hated who i was created to be, i was telling God he made a mistake. that he shouldnt have made me. or that i hated what he made and envied what he gave others. the people who loved me for who i really am told me constantly, "you are beautiful when you are yourself" and i just saw it so clearly. i saw that no one in the world could possibly be a better penelope yacovodonato than i could. i saw that i had nothing to hold back, that i could be myself and not feel shame.

now when i look in the mirror i smile. i make goofy faces and i make ugly faces and im okay with that. we are all a lil ugly sometimes and its beautiful. i love my freckles, i love my big smile, i love my sense of humor, i love the way my hair turns red in the sunlight. i love the way i sound, i think my little hands and feet are cute. i love the way God is always, always leading me by the hand and showing me how to love others they way his Son loves them. i love the way i think, and im so thankful for the body God has given me. how can i be upset at the way i look??? when i see my belly isnt perfectly flat, i just think of all the delicious food it has held. when i see my unruly hair i just remember all the times the wind whipped it around, all over my face and how good it felt. when i hear my "machine gun" laugh, i think of how many inside jokes i have with my friends and how people associate that laugh with me, penelope sage yacovodonato.

and when i feel the sorrow that 2018 gave me, i just smile through the tears in my eyes and know that God can bring me through it again.

he has shown me my strength and my worth. and now that im not so focused on myself and how i look and act and think, there is freedom. freedom that always makes me giddy and i just KNOW that all the pain he has brought me through is SO worth it.

that was so nice to type out. im happy, im satisfied in knowing that God works in such mind blowing ways.

thanks for reading, i love everyone who is reading this with a passion!!!!

xx, seiji