Inspiration.

I had absolutely no motivation to start..yet again...another blog.. Until I was having an awful week and my sister showed me this video. It really changed my whole life thinking. (If you have time, watch. If not, I'll summarize :D).

In the beginning Lizzie starts to tell us her story, she begins explaining to us how she was born without any adipose tissue in her body. Meaning she has no fat, and and no capability to retain fat in her body. When the doctor explained the disease to her parents they also told them to expect for her to not be able to walk, talk, crawl, think, or do anything. This disease ended up causing her to eat many times a day without gaining weight, lose vision in her right eye, and of course; be bullied. Growing up her parents raised her as if she didn't have the disease, causing her to have no idea that she looked different from other people. She goes on and tells a story about her first day in kindergarten. About how excited she was to make new friends. The first little girl she walked up too to befriend, looked up at her like she was  monster! Like she was the scariest thing she's ever seen in life. So she left the girl, and went on to say that her day just kept getting worse and worse. She couldn't understand why nobody wanted anything to do with her when she never did anything to them. She went home that day and asked her parents "whats wrong with me, what did I do, etc." Her parents told her that the only thing different about her was the syndrome, and it DOES NOT DEFINE WHO SHE IS. She went back to school and continued to smile and try to not let things bother her. As she got older, people got meaner. In middle school she looked at herself in the mirror and wanted to scrub the syndrome off of her face. She thought her life would be so much easier if she could just scrub it off and look like the other kids. She would wish, hope, and pray that she could wake up and the syndrome would be gone! But everyday she would wake up disappointed. In high school she tells us that someone posted an 8 second long, no sound video of her online, titled "Worlds Ugliest Woman". The video received over 4 million views. When she read the comments, strangers were saying, "Please, please just do the world a favor and put a gun to your head and kill yourself." She cried her eyes out and was ready to fight back. Until something clicked in her head and told her to just leave it alone. Then she started realizing that her life was in HER hands. She could choose to make the situation better, or choose to make it worse. So she dwelled on the things about herself that she was grateful for. She wasn't going to allow the people that called her a monster, or said "kill it with fire" define her! She used all the negative and turned it around deciding to let her goals, success, and accomplishments be the things that actually defined her. Lizzie explains to us that the only way she made it was through was with the help of her support system. 

For so long Lizzy thought her outer appearance defined who she was, until she finally realized who she really was. Before I watched this video I never thought that me and her could have so much in common. Moving to the U.S. at the age of 5. I was also very excited when it was time for me to start 1st grade, meet new people and just see what America was like. I remember on the 1st day of going to class my teacher made me go up in front of the classroom and introduce myself. Right when i said my name, a little girl yelled out and interrupted me asking why did i talk the way i did. Because I had a very thick accent then. From then on lets just say I got picked on, on a daily basis because I was African. It caused me to always have to stand up for myself, and take things personal. Just last week a random Facebook friend messaged me calling me every name in the book and pretty much judging my character. Throughout life I have been always attacked by negative words, mainly by people who never took the time to get to know me. Leading me to start thinking that maybe I was just as bad as people think. Right when I start thinking like that I always have to stop myself. After watching this video, I sat down and asked myself the same question. Who are you Emma? What defines you? And I answered those questions. Moral of the story, I think that as long as you are happy with who you are, and have an awesome support system (like I do now), then you can do anything in the world. People are always going to have things to say about you weather your good or bad. So you just have to learn to ignore those negative comments and focus on the positive ones.

"My life was put into my hands, just like yours is put into your hands. You are the person in the front seat of your car. You are the one that decides weather your car goes down a bad path, or a good path. YOU ARE THE ONE THAT DEFINES WHAT DEFINES YOU."