What You See Is What You Get

In a world of increasingly prominent bios, status updates, selfies and emojis, the world around us has become glued to your shadow box. Everything important goes in your shadow box, up on a wall to display for everyone who comes around. 

Like any good crafty person, you go to Hobby Lobby and select the best, most beautiful scrapbook paper to be your background. No one will want to be friends with someone who uses an ugly, boring background, right? 

Once you choose the snazziest, most intriguing background paper, you look for adornments to go in your box. Your favorite color is blue, but you don't want people to get the wrong idea so you keep with the pink theme, despite the fact that pink makes you look like a pig in a blanket. Gotta keep up appearances. 

Next, you go to Walmart so you can print out some awesome pictures for the shadow box. There are some great memories that you'd like to put in it, but they weren't cool...just memories of family vacations and sleepovers. So, you resort to the few pictures of a not so great vacation touring the Caribbean like the well to do person you are trying to be. But hey, the pictures look awesome and prove that you went on a great vacation. People would for sure think you were so cool!

After printing out the pictures, you go home and assemble the box. After realizing that you don't even have momentos or ticket stubs or anything to go with the lousy but aesthetically pleasing vacation, you resort to printing out fake cruise tickets to go with said vacation. You didn't want to remember this trip, and you have nothing to remember it by, but hey, you look so cool. 

You're pleased with the bang-up job you've done at setting up the profile of your awesomeness in a wooden box, so now there's only one thing left to do...

wait for the likes to pour in.

You stake out in the hall, waiting for people to walk by and notice how cool you are for sticking to the status quo. You might not like what's in the box, but by gosh you hope the people around you do! You spent a lot of time perfecting angles and forging tickets of awesomeness.

You find yourself swimming in likes, some which come from people whom you may not have expected. You're overwhelmed with comments such as "looks like you had a blast!" and "we need to hang sometime!". Wow, what a little craft supply and imagination will do for your appearance!

Later on, after developing friendships with these people who saw that shadow box and thought you were cool because of it, you start to feel regretful for those pink adornments and that fake cruise ticket. Mainly because you find yourself in a nail salon getting pink mani-pedis with the girls in preparation for your cruise.

The walls start the come down a little when you announce that you want a mint blue nail polish. The people who saw your shadow box are shocked because the thing was practically covered in pink everything. Days before the cruise, you ask those friends if the group could just hit the beach and relax instead. 

Before you know it, the shadow box has collapsed and all that are left are your family vacation pictures and chipped mint blue nail polish. 

This happens to everyone. Every day.
(don't deny it!)

Only instead of a shadow box, it is a Facebook profile, Twitter feed or Instagram account. We tend to post things that are aesthetically pleasing, in pursuit of likes and <3s. We gravitate towards the people who give them to us. 

Not only that, but we have become a society that thrives off of these meaningless compliments. So much that we focus on perfecting the ideal image in order to obtain them. No one posts about a subpar vacation, nor does someone ever post a video of themselves butchering a song cover. We only want to show the good parts.  

Now, I've never assembled a shadow box or been on a cruise, but I can say that we all have experienced this social media friendship. Friends who seem compatible until you reach the surface. Very few friends make it past to the surface. But when you find the ones who do, keep them close, because those are the ones worth keeping! Even if they don't like your stupid picture or <3 your witty status!

"You're At Home"

My sophomore year of college at Gardner-Webb, I was coming back from Easter break to my old, decrepit dorm room on a Sunday afternoon. The security system had gone haywire, so I couldn't get access into the building. Therefore, I had to go to University Police to gain access. On our way back to my dorm, the Chief of UP was asking where I live. I told him, and he said "Oh, well you're at home then." Home.

Over one year later, I am still stewing on that phrase. Chief was implying that I did not live too far away, and that Gardner-Webb was my secondary home. But, man, how can you define home? Home is not four walls and a wifi password. Home is not a luxury apartment with a view. Home is where your friends and family are. It's where your heart lies. Home.

During that year of stewing at Gardner-Webb, I learned a few things along the way. First and foremost, let me please just throw this out there: college is not this magical experience full of never ending excitement and friendship. Actually, I learned quite the contrary. Home.

At this "home" of mine, during my junior year, the most important lesson I learned was to quit crossing oceans for people who wouldn't jump puddles for me. I know you are supposed to love people, but there is a difference between loving someone and having respect for yourself. You deserve to give and be given back to in return. You deserve respect and answers and true friendship and love and adventure and unrelenting grace. You deserve to demand all of that. Home.

There was a moment during my junior year of college where I pretty much lost grip of who I was. I let these external influences affect me in ways that are absolutely inexcusable. I lost incredible friends and indescribable experiences. All in the name of being...cool? For like 2.3 seconds? Looking back, I can't even begin to wrap my head around why I thought it was cool to mock, degrade and insult others. I found my circle grow smaller and smaller; all the while, still thinking about this "home" thing, I began to wonder. Is this really a home? Am I at home here, as myself? Home.

If anything, I was homesick. Literally, so much that I began to commute back and forth every week. Back and forth, again and again, to that "home" Chief talked about. There were more than 4 walls and there was definitely a wifi password. I did not consider Gardner-Webb anything like home from then on out. Being there was not a pleasant experience at all. I dreaded going back every Sunday night. But all of this dread had me still thinking about "home". Home.

I reached a point a few weeks later, after weeding out all of the negativity and drama, to see a light. I saw something that few people can say they have. I found that, in the process of "losing" so many fake friends and influences, I had found those few who stuck by my side. Two friends might sound pathetic to some, but I am and will be forever grateful for those two people. I learned friends will come and go, and that is okay. But those who stay see more value than what can be seen with the eye.
Because you don't need those influences that don't see your full worth.
You don't need to be dragged into something that takes away from your natural awesomeness.
You don't need "friends" who flip a coin every day to decide if they will like you.

I'm coming home.

I am very proud to say that at the age of twenty-one, I quit caring what people said or thought or did. I gave up on caving in. I stopped sacrificing who I was to get a rise out of others. Now, I will be the first to say that it truly stinks when you begin to take a stand against everything you ever stood on. You will often find yourself alone, but hear me out. From experience, it is so much better to be alone than to be in the presence of negativity. Might not seem that way, but it is. I'm Olivia. I like to make other people happy. I listen to country music. And I learned that I'm going nowhere but up. Home.

Don't compromise yourself for a popularity contest. People don't care how cool you might seem, trust me. They are more concerned with themselves. Don't let anyone dull your sparkle. Be you. Stand for what you believe is right.

I'm finally home.