I never look into mirrors with confidence, I never feel pretty enough, and I never feel smart enough. Whenever I think about my insufficiencies, I tell myself that there are thousands of other teenagers, and not just girls, that feel that way. It’s the age, isn’t it?

I don’t remember when I started to feel the way I did. Maybe it was when I began high school last fall, surrounded by perfection. Or maybe it was my sister was admitted to Dartmouth, and I began to feel the stress of the expectations ahead of me. Maybe it was when my brother said he was going to continue school to earn his Doctorette. Regardless of when it was, it always hits me like I train.

Trying never feels good enough, never brings the success people expect. Why do people expect things from me because of my siblings? And I’ve realized, I’m not ever going to perfect, no matter how hard I try. Almost making varsity soccer? Well, I was a swinger, not an official team member. Being tenth in the Nordic state meet? How about top five. You had all A’s last quarter? Nice, but let’s fix that ninety-one in geometry.

For a while, I really wanted to blame it on other people. Every time I felt like no one cared, and when I would wish that life was easier. The days when I wondered what point there was of being alive, or when I thought that I had failed. For a long time, I thought that I could never do anything to make anyone take pride in what I did.

But it took some of the best adults in my life to tell me that people cared. They convinced me that it wasn’t that other people didn’t love me, it was that I refused to see it. First, it was my soccer coach in the fall. He told me that I was far too hard on myself, and that it was easy to see that I never saw the things that I did right. Then, my Nordic coach, who is probably the most influential one. She told me, after one of my races, that I couldn’t compare myself with my sister. We were far too different, she said, and our competitors were different. She also convinced me to be happy with my results, when I didn’t feel like I had done well enough. These adults were the people who kept my fire burning.

I’ve had other adults in my life who have only made it harder. A geometry teacher comes to mind easily. She once asked me, in the beginning of the semester, if I was as good a skier as my sister. Later on, she also asked if I was as smart as her. (And told me that she hadn’t thought my brother was as smart as her, and was surprised at how far he’d gotten). It was easy for me to believe her, and everyone else who had said things like that. A so called friend, who said that I was setting myself up to be compared to my sister by playing the same sports. Handfuls of other people have made it hard for me, unconsciously tearing away at my self-esteem with thoughtless words.

So what does it all mean; my experiences, the terrible feelings I have? It has led that some people, like me, learn the hard way. You are your own biggest enemy. It doesn’t matter what other people see in you if you don’t believe it and you prefer to see through it. But when you believe the good things that people say and not the bad, you will be great. If you can rise above the tide that tries to pull you in, that is when you become unstoppable. Almost, in a way, like having super powers, invincibility begins with believing in yourself.

Never let people who say terrible things drag you down, especially when they haven’t seen everything that you can do. When someone in your life tells you that you can’t, turn around and say ‘Watch me!’ Don’t an enemy to yourself, like I did. When I stopped trying to prove to other people that I was good at things, I began to believe that I was alright. It’s difficult, in high school, to believe your own morality. But if you lose yourself along the way, you will only be an obstacle in your own path.