Growing Pains

—  A project I spent about four months on, where I sat down with the individuals photographed and listened to what they have learned from the various "growing pains" they have experienced so far.

Kiersten • Growing Pains • 08.07.2017

How can I grow? How can I be my best self — I feel like all this has been the most painful process in the world. Working through all the trauma you have, working through all abusive relationships, or sexual assault, seeing some awful shit at work, I think it… I think I’ve grown more in this year more than I ever have in my life. I don’t even recognize who I was last year. I truly don’t. I feel like I am so much more confident in my abilities. For the first time ever, I truly believe that I can conquer anything in life. I think that’s taken such a long process.

Self love is just… the most important thing. I think I’ve literally spent more time alone in this year than I ever have in my life, like, SO much time and I have to tell you, it’s been the most amazing time ever. I love myself. So much. And I think this is the first time in my life that I can actually say it and believe it fully. I’m finally like, feeding myself like a real person, which is something I’ve never really done. I do things because I want to do them and not because someone else wants me to, I stand up for myself and I love hanging out with myself. I’m perfectly content alone. It’s just the weirdest thing, I’ve never felt this way before, I think I was always scared to be alone and now I almost never want to be with anyone else… which is kind of bad cause I’m totally introverted, but I’m just so fine in my own company. It’s kind of great, knowing that whatever next step I take in my life, I plan on moving, and knowing how happy I am alone, I can do that.

It’s weird how you change… but a good weird. I say what I feel and I don’t feel bad about it, and I think a lot of that has to do with me breaking down all these walls I had up, I feel like as a society we’re told to not share things… it’s very much this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” having to break that down is so hard but realizing that you just cannot grow until you’re vulnerable… vulnerability allows growth. You have to allow yourself to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for the harm you do to your body and to others but also, forgive others who have hurt you. I feel like that is something that’s been so hard — how much I’ve worked on forgiving other people. Some people I just don’t want to forgive, but realizing that until I forgive those people, I cannot move on, I cannot grow. Realizing that’s how to love people — through forgiveness… I just, I can’t be my best self until I forgive you.

I need to be my own motivation instead of someone else being my motivation. I feel like throughout high school and coming to college my parents were my main motivation - things just fell into place and luckily I didn’t have to put a crazy amount of effort for many things, things really worked out… but now I’m at that point where I really need to take more time to myself and once I figure out what I want to do next I have to go for it full force, I have to be my own motivation for that.

I think up until this point I’ve been pretty good at taking hardships as they come - thankfully it hasn’t been anything too directly involving me… but I think in a way that’s even worse because when the people around me are hurting that’s when I hurt the most. So I think it’s just having to accept what’s in my control and what I can do for other people while also being able to focus on what I need to accomplish and what my goals are - and not putting those secondary to other people’s needs. I think I’m still figuring out that balance.

I feel like when I was going through really tough times - not only in listening to music but having a good time at shows, and the friends I made going to shows - music has brought me so much peace. I’ve met some amazing people and gotten closer to people sometimes because of shows. Which is also exciting knowing I’m just leaving Austin to go to another big city for live music, I know music will be there which makes me feel even more comforted - like I already have a list of shows that I have to see the rest of this year.

I feel like I’m just going to end up falling in love with Chicago just like I fell in love with Austin. And there’s going to be so many opportunities… but it’s also terrifying. I’m terrified. I have so many mixed emotions about everything. I’m scared that I’m going to have those moments when I’m alone in my apartment and I’ll break down, because it’s happened to me before when I was in Austin - but looking back I also see how it was all meant to happen for a reason - even those moments of breaking down.

I’m actually finally learning about myself. I’m learning who I am - my best version - and not apologizing for it. I think that in the past I always felt like I needed to be someone else for everyone else around me and now that I’m getting closer to 30 you know I want to look back and have something to not only remember but also something to be proud of.

It's so important to sometimes remember to utilize your heart in place of your mind in making big decisions for your future. I’ve become so connected with myself and the people around me for no other reason except just opening that door, with my heart, to love and I’ve been really lucky and very grateful to sort of reap the rewards of this. I'm just being my most honest, simple, sober self.

I had to figure out a way to stay here because my sister is my best friend, she is the only one who’s experienced everything in my life alongside me, we grew up in the same house together so learning how to be open and aware and how to save my life is the only way I can be there for my sister. If I stayed closed minded and could only do one thing, be one thing, live one thing, and that everyone else also has to do, live, and be one thing then I wouldn’t be here. It’s impossible and it was impossible for me to do. I mean there are times where it still gets hard but I had to become open and aware of these realities. I had to accept being transgender, I had to accept being a lesbian, I had to accept these things that were happening to me - I couldn’t deny them. If I wasn’t living my truth, I couldn’t live, I was unhappy. That’s why I don’t care about sharing because I don’t know, maybe it’ll save someone else’s life.

No one wants it to be pointed out that they’re different when somebody is already telling you you’re supposed to be a certain way. I was already being forced and told to wear dresses and I didn’t want to wear dresses, I wanted to play sports and play with action figures and do dragonball Z versus barbie and all that crap, you know. So coming out as trans was hard I didn’t want to accept that, coming out as a lesbian was already hard, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be more different but I just got tired. I got tired with not being real and not being true and at that point I just didn’t care anymore. So I came out and then when the trans thing happened I was like ‘Crap! This is another thing that people are going to be different to me about, this is going to be another thing’ and mostly I didn’t want to deal with other people’s negativity. I was so tired though so I just… I just did it.

I feel like I’m in between gaining knowledge and the ability to use that & put that back out into the world. It should be a very simple equation a very simple input out put thing that should be happening and it’s not. I feel like I’m not gaining anything and I’m not giving back anything, I guess that’s what I mean by stagnant. I’m not growing but I’m also feeling like I’m not letting anyone else grow either. And maybe I’m not growing cause I’m scared of what it means to grow… maybe that’s part of the frustration too. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to move forward or move back in that equation. I think even if I were to figure everything out and my dreams all come true, what I’ve been working towards for 5 years comes true, am I going to get that feeling back? That feeling of being connected to the rest of the world in like a real important, fills your soul up, brings tears to your eyes kind of way? I don’t know if it will.

I can’t figure out how to be an adult. I feel like I’m stuck in this weird spot in the middle where people now expect that we get it and these responsibilities that are given to us, we’re just gonna be like ‘yeah! it’s cool, I got this!’ which I don’t… I don’t got it. At all. And I don’t know what to do majority of the time. I could use like a crash course on learning how to be an adult, not just the logistical stuff but emotionally as well. I just don’t want to be scared of stuff anymore. I want to be excited again. I just feel like I got so caught up in trying to figure out what it means to be an adult I almost feel like I lost that ability to see the brightness in every person and situation and feel like there was always more of myself to give. I was constantly getting knowledge and love and support and I can’t seem to do or find those things now in the real world. This in-between time is just a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.

I think something else I’ve recently learned as I try to better understand love and loving myself - is to recognize when people simply aren’t good to be around, not necessarily that they’re bad people, but just it’s time to let go of them in your life. They may have meant something once and it doesn’t invalidate the good moments you had when you let them go, you’re just moving on and trying to respect yourself and grow yourself and love yourself.

In finding different ways to love myself… I’m still learning and working on it, there are plenty of days where I’m like ‘I suck at everything’ but it’s learning how to take a step back and to remember that even if this is my worst moment I am not my worst moment, and to ask how can I be better tomorrow and how can I love better and how can I embrace the people around me more closely… it’s learning how to not beat yourself up when you mess up. It’s learning how to grow from your mistakes and to grow from things that don’t go the way you want them to go.

I think I need to learn to — I think people in general need to learn to maybe not try to be happy but try to work on being happy. I think that was my problem I tried too hard to put off that I was this happy person who was doing fine and who is strong when in reality working on being happy is a process and for me it was just a lot longer of a process than I imagined it would be but it definitely pays off like where I’m at today — I’m not 100% where I was at before but I feel like the process that I’ve worked on to get to where I am is what shows rather than putting on a face, putting on all this makeup and saying "I’m ok!"

I’m just so afraid with not knowing. I think that’s the real thing, with all these people, with relationships, with friends, people you thought you were friends with when you lose touch with them the scary thing is not knowing them anymore. Not knowing someone anymore to me... is scary. I like to be there for people, I like to go through the motions of life with people - if they’re hurting then I wanna hurt with them and help them through it.

It’s just who I am, I love people and I love the humanity within people and I see beauty in every single person because I have to. Otherwise I’d be super depressed and super self conscious - I’d just be super fucked up if I don’t see beauty in every single person. I’ll be like ‘damn - I’m not beautiful if I can’t see their beauty…

…I mean, that’s not to say people can’t have fucked up actions - people can do fucked up things but that doesn’t change the fact that there is one glowing, beautiful, amazing thing that just makes me thankful for who they are and the subtleties that bring out who they are. Who you are isn’t about what you’re wearing or who you’re dating, who you are is in the subtleties of how you see things.

I’m a firm believer you are who you surround yourself with and the people I have surrounded myself with brought out the ‘no fucks given’ in me. I don’t need to please anyone and I don’t need to live my life for other people, I just need to be me to my core. This is me. I love who I love, and along the way you just attract people because of what you’re putting out and I’m thankful to have met the people I’ve met. I’m just learning as I get older you don’t need to have a huge number of people surrounding you - you just need your soul tribe - your crew that just gets you.

In reflecting - you just realize how much self love is there, you realize how much you’ve grown. I realize now how much I love myself, I love being me, I love being Lexi. And if I can just show people that hopefully that helps people love themselves too. We’re all so different but we’re the same in a sense. I just never want to stop learning, I never want to stop meeting people because then I feel like I’m not going to grow to my potential. None of us will ever be at a point where we are done growing but I hope I can look back on everything in life and be like "holy shit! I’ve come so far!"

I feel like I've grown a lot in terms of being more aware of what I have and what I don't have and that it's important to reflect on the past but not be so caught up in it that you regress, just kind of take the lessons that you learn and just continue on cause you know you can't really get stuck in the past, it's only gonna hurt more than it did...

You learn that people who are with you throughout a large part of your life aren't always gonna be there, they're not going to continue on in the rest of your life... things happen... I guess I've just learned a lot in the past year, about who you can trust and that how people react isn't always the absolute truth of how they feel cause they only have a small piece of the story.

You have to remember to stay grounded.