Abigail Crick

Being told I “act like a little kid” is something I used to associate as an insult, however, now that is one of the biggest compliments I could receive.

Throughout high school, I consumed a lot of my free time on my phone and tried to make my life appear the way society expects of me to others. I concealed my personality and became a very dull person overall. Going into senior year I began to stop thinking about what others opinions of me are. I was surrounded by my friends that encouraged me to go out of my comfort zone. I began to spend less time focusing on what others thought and spent that time doing activities I had always wanted to try.

Picking flowers and taking pictures of butterflies became the small aspects that I genuinely looked forward to. After a while, my friends would also take pictures of flowers and butterflies to send them all to me when I was having a bad day. Looking back, I associated my switch of being grateful for the small things in life with allowing myself to not care about what others assumed my stereotype was. People that I had few reactions with began to reach out and notice my change of demeanor. By the end of senior year, I was confident in the change I had made in myself that all started with thinking about how beautiful flowers and butterflies were.