I remember being a child a wanting to become a surgeon when I got older. I was always so outspoken, confident and determined that whatever I set out to achieve, I would. There was no one or nothing that could stand in the way of my hopes, dreams, and desires. I was in a environment where I was never told I couldn’t but nor was I ever told that I could either. But that didn’t matter. This was just the way that I believed in myself unapologetically and without the approval of anyone else around me. I never stopped to look around and see who didn’t believe in me because it didn’t matter. I just always had a fire inside of my heart and soul that wanted to achieve as much as I could.
By the time I got to middle education and had experienced a tragic loss of my father, I wanted more than anything to become a Psychologist. I began to understand so much about myself and the way that the mind worked so I had to dig so much deeper into myself at such a youthful time in my life. While many were playing and doing things that early teens are doing, I was more focused on understanding the behaviors and mind of oneself. While people were living I was studying. While people around me having fun, I was reading. I was always a little more serious. Maybe a little too serious to the point I sacrificed a lot of my fun times. But I didn’t see it that way, I was just on a mission.
But only because I knew that there was something good behind it. After my father passed away, I began to express my dreams with outsiders. I didn’t have many other supportive sources in my life. I wanted to see if I would get the same responses that I had received before but it wasn’t. Instead of being inside of my own head I began to look around me. I had friends (well people I thought were my friends) family, strangers, teachers etc. that would laugh at my dreams in my face. Tell me I wasn’t good enough. Tell me I would never be able to accomplish certain things because of the classes I was taking. Told me my dreams was unrealistic. Told me I was living in a imaginary world. Told me I didn’t look the part of what I wanted to do. People tell me I’m trying to be something I’m not for wanting more. People telling me how they went out of their way not to support me.
Before I knew it I begin to believe these things about myself because it was the only feedback I was receiving. I started actually to believe that I was a product of my environment. The mentality that I had was no longer there anymore. I begin to slack off in school. I stopped caring as much as I did. I stopped believing in myself because I said well maybe they’re right and I’m wrong. I told myself to wake up multiple times but somehow I already felt woke. I already felt alive. I felt as though everyone else around me was asleep. So it became more about proving toe everyone that I was on the track that I was supposed to be on. All I had was a dollar and a dream but I had no goals or plans to get there.
I became a college freshman. By this time I had multiple learned behaviors. I didn’t speak as often, I listened. I didn’t party as much, I watched. I needed to see so much of what I was missing. In class I wouldn’t raise my hand anymore. At work I wouldn’t take the initiative. I said why bother, no one would see me anyhow. By that I meant really see me. I realized I became the girl trying too prove who she was when she wasn’t being her the whole time. These learned behaviors had become her new way of life. She sacrificed her voice, greatness, and uniqueness so that other’s around her were able to have their ego’s stroked. She found that this way was better because she had no one to be upset with her for being the center of attention.
She let go of all of her pride and called it being humble. She let go of all her humor and called it maturity. She let go of all her ideas and called it sacrifice. She let go of all her dreams and called it a waste of time. She let go of her voice and called it being selfless. But all this time she was letting go of who she was. Her life was no longer her own it was theirs. But who is they? She had learned from them that she was nothing more than what they thought she was but she was the only one who had control of that mindset. She had given away everything that made her, for others to feel alive and that broke her.
She thought that it was the right thing to do, so now she faces the biggest challenge of her life; which is to repair the child in her adult body. Have you ever heard the quote, “It’s much easier to build up a child than it is to repair an adult. “-Unknown. One of the hardest things to do as an adult is undo learned behaviors and patterns that you didn’t exactly put there. You have to reverse your mind. The way that you think. Undo the way that you respond to things. Undo the wrong way of doing things and do it right. Let go of lazy and bad habits that didn’t get you anywhere. Let go and release all of the things that the naysayers said about you and you believed it. Maybe even undo a lie in your life that you lived on for periods of time.
Either way though, anytime you decide to make a change in your life it’s never easy. She just realized that before she could accomplish much of anything she must first relearn what was right and undo what was wrong. The biggest yet most rewarding challenge one could ever face is repairing the child in their adult body but it was definitely necessary for her growth. She realized how much she wasn’t who she thought she was anymore. She realized the lies she had forced herself to believe to make others feel comfortable. She realized the imagine she had to obtain was only hurting her in the long run. She realized that the only one who was holding her back was the child in her who never repaired in her now adult body. Now to this day she is striving to become the woman, the girl couldn’t control.
Jasmine Crockett 
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