you some things are hard to say in our lives we all face conversations we are scared to have whether it's confronting someone about a problem asking for a raise or even saying the first I love you to someone and that can be really frustrating because oftentimes the words we just can't seem to get out are the ones we need to say in order to get what we want so we are given a choice speak and risk rejection or stay silent and never move forward so oftentimes the choice of whether or not to speak up about
something can be a double-edged sword now I am not timid by any means I'm a theater major I'm more comfortable talking to a crowd like you than I am being in one but in the last few years I have faced many situations where I was rendered speechless due to intimidation anxiety or just plain fear and people might find that surprising about me because for the last year I have traveled the state of Wisconsin as a motivational speaker to high school students people probably wouldn't assume that for years I was terrified of talking because my very
career itself revolves around it but public speaking is a lot different than private conversation in a speech you can be as articulate and precise as you want it's all laid out there for you and you just have to deliver it but you can't rehearse private conversation there's no guarantee that you'll say the most clever thing at the perfect moment or that the other person won't look at you like you're crazy you are on your own and for some people that can be really hard in fact some people are crippled by the fear of being judged
during conversation and as one of those people I can tell you that the more unpredictable and uncontrollable our lives become the quieter we become my life didn't become that unpredictable until just before I turn 16 up until that point been pretty stable but that summer the most inconceivable life-altering mind-blowing events of my teenage life occurred I met a boy a real live actual boy and God or a boy he was he had a face that should have been on Billboard's and a voice like Sinatra if you don't understand what I'm saying the boy was hot
I'm gonna call him Joe and to me Joe was about as perfect as perfect could get I felt unworthy standing next to him I had been self-conscious about my looks for a long time and I rarely considered that anyone let alone this wonder boy with brown eyes would think that my scrawny frame and deer-in-the-headlights face would be attractive but then a wave of unpredictability hit and Joe told me he was into me and I have a normal teenage girl reaction I flipped out I had never had a boyfriend before and things like this never happened
to me it was perfect but like many summer flings turn out to be Joe's and my courtship was rather tumultuous he had been my first kiss which I had built up and might had to be this end-all-be-all experience but in the moment I was a nervous wreck and after the moment I couldn't even look at Joe we didn't talk for weeks and I figured we were done but later that summer Joe made it very clear to me at a pool party that he was not finished he tried more than once to cross boundaries with me
that I was not ready to cross and I was so confused I really liked Joe but I wanted him to stop but I didn't want him to think that I was lame so I just froze and I said it was fine but it was not fine it was humiliating and I left that party feeling confused bewildered and judged for the fact that I was still nuts about this guy so sophomore year started and I was devastated over Joe we didn't talk for almost an entire year and I'm not the type to let a guy get
to me but Joe was the itch that I couldn't scratch it was teenager II and stupid and talking to my friends about it made me feel teenager II and stupid so I just stopped talking about it I just sucked it up but the memories of the first kiss the pool party and whatever else away and I kept moving but then in my junior year life took another unexpected turn when Joe and I reconnected and this time I fell hard suddenly he was so much more than just a perfect face he was funny charming and talented
and I genuinely thought that what had happened the summer before was just a phase this Joe was different so when he asked me out I was still hesitant but I had been waiting for this guy for almost two years I thought that this time we would get it right and for a while everything was as perfect as I dreamed it would be my life revolved around Joe seeing Joe daydreaming about Joe snapchatting Joe kissing Joe and as much as I hate saying this and sounding melodramatic I really did fall in love with him he was
the first guy I could see a future with and I really wanted that future but then again life started to unravel our conversations became emptier I would get so frustrated with his flip replies to things that I really cared about but I didn't want to make him uncomfortable so I just brushed it off but I felt like I was giving a lot more than I was getting Joe would flirt with other girls right in front of me he was rude to me in front of his friends and it seemed like every time I tried to
voice my opinion about even simple things he would come back with well that's dumb and since I thought he was so perfect I considered everything I loved to be wrong I knew I was losing him and I started having anxiety attacks I became so caught up in trying to impress Joe the I started forgetting about myself then just a few days before Valentine's Day of 2014 just two months after we started dating I found out that Joe asked another girl to our junior prom and I was in shock I was in love with this guy
I had waited two years for him and he couldn't even give me two months of his time in my whole life I had never felt more degraded and betrayed and stupid so I ended it that night and just like that the future that I had imagined for myself one with Joe and babies in a big white house was gone and for the next few months I went numb it felt like my life wasn't real I had gone from obsessing about Joe's every move to not speaking to him at all it was like he died and
when school ended I had nothing to busy myself with so I would cower away in my room and cry I thought if I told people how I felt no one would take me seriously so I just sucked it up and I dealt with it on my own when my senior year started I would at my wit's end I knew I had to get out of the hole that I had been in all summer and there was a leadership group at my school that I was really curious about so I went to a few meetings and
eventually I became president of that group and my first order of business was to create an anti-bullying event for October bullying is an interesting subject for me because I've been on both sides of it I've been bullied before but I've also dished it out to people in turn and I really cared about this group and I wanted to make a big event so I decided that I was going to give my first motivational speech ever to my entire high school no pressure in that speech I talked about my insecurities my own experience is with bullying
and how I found the strength to stop bullying and people loved it I was on TV interviewed in the paper and best of all kids really took that speech to heart it was invigorating to put myself in such a vulnerable position and then being met with such a positive response I was amazed at how much my words could do and by how much social status it gave me in such a short amount of time people started calling me Miss Perfect and I didn't love that but I took it as a compliment I was on top
of the world but with my new reputation came big responsibilities anytime someone needed a leader for a project I was the go-to girl and I didn't want to say no I was Miss Perfect so I could handle anything right pretty soon I was writing the school newspaper running a variety show taking dance lessons AP classes working filling out scholarships and by December it felt like I was running the school and I had no margin for error getting something wrong would mean risking my perfect exterior and I could not lose that I was exhausted and in
the rare moments of peace I was still thinking about Joe outside I was lighter than air inside I was breaking and my method of dealing with everything worked like this tell no one if people found out that Miss Perfect was crying in her room every night the jig would have been up so I kept silent but just a few days before Christmas break I cracked I broke down crying and I couldn't stop and ironically that happened in the middle of my ap psychology class so I ran out of the room my parents were called and
finally after almost three years of holding everything in I let it all out and it was relieving to have finally admitted the truth but it didn't come without consequences Christmas break began with me telling my family that I was not okay and it ended with me attending my first sessions of cognitive behavioural therapy where I was diagnosed with depression and social anxiety the beginning of my recovery was excruciatingly confronting emotions that I had been swallowing for so long with my therapist felt like being naked in a room with someone I had just met and then
I'd have to go back and relay it all to my family or go back to school and pretend like I hadn't just been crying or even go back to ap psych and learn about the very things I was going through it was incredibly hard and I didn't want anyone to know therapy was helping me tremendously but there was still a huge disconnect between the perfect smiley girl I was at school and the anxious depressive one who came out in therapy and I thought if I told people who I really was they wouldn't believe me so
as time went on I started having more success with motivational speaking and for many of those ventures I talked about depression and my recovery process and instead of being met with rejection or ridicule like I was afraid of I received nothing but the warmest empathy from my audiences kids were telling me their own stories of adversity simply because I had shared mine and all of that got me thinking if I could tell hundreds of strangers about the part of my life that I was most ashamed of what was so hard about telling the rest of
my friends and those who already cared about me the real truth so pretty soon I started talking and I started small with just a few friends and then a few more and it brought me closer to them than we had ever been before knowing that I had an army of true devoted friends to help me on my worst days made such a difference and it literally killed my anxiety I stopped thinking about Joe stop trying to be perfect and instead started living life for the only person I ever should have lived it for myself life
is unpredictable if anyone would have told me that I would go through eight months of therapy and become a motivational speaker all the same calendar year I would have laughed in their face but Here I am and I still deal with depression and anxiety all the time no issue is ever fully solved but in the last year I've come to realize that even though I'm young and sometimes teenager II and stupid I have a voice and that I can use it to share what I've learned from this crazy ugly beautiful cycle that is life and
the first thing I learned is that perfection is overrated for years I tried so hard to date the perfect boy have a perfect reputation be a perfect girl and ultimately all of those ventures went down in flames being real on the other hand has brought me nothing but success breaking down in psyche that day got me into the help that I needed telling my friends about Who I am has made us closer than we've ever been and telling my audiences about my imperfect past has gotten people talking about subjects that I'm really passionate about perfection
is not only unattainable but it's unrelatable no one is perfect thus no one can relate to a perfect person but everyone has flaws and in my experience people don't care if you're a little rough around the edges maybe I'm naive but I truly believe that if you're kind caring and honest with people you can make friends with anyone and anyone who still expects you to be perfect on top of all of that isn't worth your time anyway the next thing I learned is that vulnerability is crucial to finding yourself Andrew Solomon an award-winning writer and
lecturer writes in one of his testimonies that by choosing to avoid situations that make us vulnerable we Forge meaning into our lives but life doesn't have time for that life is going to be unpredictable and force you into situations where you're uncomfortable but instead of running from those situations we should do what University of Houston researcher brené Brown says to do and leave into the discomfort of life it took me years to tell someone that I was not okay but if I hadn't I would probably still be crying in my room we need more bravery
so embrace the situations that make you squirm give them hell you don't gain muscle by staying out of the weight room and you won't gain personal strength if you only choose to look at the pretty parts of life so psychoanalyze yourself confront the emotions and the people you need to confront and you will find the you you're supposed to be the last thing I learned is probably the most obvious thing but I'm going to be vulnerable and imperfect and maybe even look a little stupid and tell you anyway and the thing is that you have
to talk to get what you need we were all given these things called mouths and hands and these gifts called speech and signing and as somebody who went silent for years I'm telling you use them let people in no matter how stupid you think you sound someone will take you seriously someone wants to help you so talk about the things that matter to you whether it's in front of hundreds of people or even just with one person leave nothing unsaid because it's always the things that you don't say that haunt you the most but if
you're honest with people the ones who truly love you will listen life isn't always as easy a small talk it took me 18 years and eight months of therapy to realize that I have a voice but now that I found it that voice has led me to do things I never knew I could do like giving a TED talk about talking my voice has helped me see that there is so much power in speaking up and that there's a lot more to life than seeking to be the best and everything we have a voice let's
use it because some things are hard to say and life is unpredictable weird uncomfortable totally aggravating and yet incomprehensible beautiful in so many ways and we should talk about thank you
