On Vulnerability

We've been talking a lot this week about how we represent ourselves on social media, on how colleges will see us and how the rest of the world thinks of us through that.

My first instinct is to say that I'm not ashamed of anything that I've put out under my name. And I'm not. I feel like I've even been a lot more true to myself than a lot of people are, and though that's messy, isn't everyone? Should it matter what a college thinks if they see a few of the most personal things I've said, even if they find them, because I've been careful and don't put my last name on a lot of it?

I don't think so. I try to be kind to others. I have friends, I write, I participate in Girl Scouts and raise money for church and buy lollipops from the French club. I also have had a lot of minor breakdowns, venting through social media, and while I'm not comfortable with a stranger seeing that kind of thing I'll not hide that I did it.

I don't really know what to think. I know that I believe my personal blog should be a safe place for me to talk about how I feel. 

But I don't know how it'll affect my future, if at all. I don't know what to think when our teachers say that you need to be more careful, show only the good parts of yourself. Where's the truth in that? Where's the sincerity? If you lie about the worst parts of yourself, how are people supposed to know what you're really like in "real life"?

I don't know how to justify hiding things like that. I think that I'll continue trying to be as real as possible with whoever reads this, and I think that if I stop telling the truth someday that I'll have lost sight of who I am.