“Careful now, you’re so beautiful
When you’ve convinced yourself
That no one else is quite as beautiful.”
– Dashboard Confessional, So Beautiful

I hesitate to say all, but I will say most of having a defining moment in our lives. At least one. Probably two, or three, or more than a dozen over time. A moment when your world threatens to fall apart. When you have the choice [and you do, have a choice that is] to either slide down the slope of embarrassment, resentment, shame, regret, and self-loathing….or to pick yourself up and say, “How can I turn this into something positive? How can I make myself better because of this?”

I will let you in on two in my life.

The first one is perhaps an extended moment. I had cancer when I was 18 months old and I lost my left eye to it. I don’t remember ever having two eyes. I don’t know what my parents went through when they found out their daughter had surgery and only had a 40% chance to live.

All I know is I was a kid with one eye, and I was [and am] different. I can’t put eyeshadow and eyeliner on properly because my eyelids don’t sit symmetrically. I’ll never be a model and I can’t take the perfect selfie unless one eye is hidden by hair.

But I made a choice, so many times growing up, to not be ashamed of this. Sure, there are days that I wake up and wish that I had two eyes. That I looked like everyone else. That I could look to the side in a photo and not look like a weird caricature of someone. But it doesn’t define me, at least not in a bad way. I make one-eye jokes all the time because it helps let people know that it’s okay. It’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to ask, because I’m okay with it.

Having one eye is something I can’t change, so I might as well get over it and just be me.

In high school, a friend and I decided to run for Student Government Secretary. We knew we would lose, because we were running against the popular guy. So we decided to make the most ridiculous speeches possible since they were broadcast to the entirety of our 2500 person high school. He made an entire speech about the song ‘My Humps’ with hand drawn pictures included. It was amazing.

I took my eye out on camera.

The reactions were varied. Some people championed it. Some people thought it was hilarious (which was the intent). But I also got anonymous messages telling me I should kill myself. I got people telling me I was gross and disgusting and that I should be ashamed. I could have let these things get to me, but I didn’t. In fact, I repeated the whole thing in college, earning myself the nickname ‘Leela’ with the USC Drumline.

Sure, some people think it’s gross and weird, but I don’t. I simply won’t let how other people view my physical appearance define who I think I am.

My second moment is a more of a ‘moment’ and in fact an ‘ah ha!’ moment to put it frankly. Without going into too many details, before classes even started my senior year of college, I got called into the office of our band director and told that I couldn’t be Drumline Section Leader anymore. In fact, I couldn’t be any type of leadership. I couldn’t even go on my senior trip to Hawaii.

And it was all my fault. Someone else may have been the reason the leadership found out about what I had done, but it was my fault.

As someone who spent many years of high school and college depressed and blaming herself for everything that went wrong, I went back to my house and locked myself in my room. As the others involved raged about it and threatened to quit band (and some did), I spent a lot of time lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling.

I surprised myself that night. Usually, I would have broken up. And by ‘broken up’ I mean totally and completely lost it. I would have cried, and sworn, and told myself I was such a miserable idiot for putting myself in that situation. I would have tried to drink it away and become even more of a mess.

But it clicked for me that night. I could do all that, and sure, it would be easy. It would be so easy to just give in. But it would be more useful – more useful by far – to do the difficult thing of saying,

“Yes, I screwed up. Badly. Really badly. But I won’t let this moment define me. I won’t give in. I won’t give up. I will move forward, and I will move forward now. I will find some way to make this experience a positive thing. I don’t know how I’m going to manage to do that, but I’m going to do it.”

And I did.

I still think back to that day wondering where on earth that mindset came from. I wonder what woke up inside of me. I wonder what finally realized that I can define myself. I can choose to define myself, even when I’ve made a major mistake.

And you can too.