As you’re growing up, the relationships in your household influence your idea and vision of what love is, and it’s something that you carry with you, consciously and subconsciously into your adult life.

I’m just going to go out on a limb and say that if you’re still reading this, you’ve probably experienced the kind of love where you have a heated argument, you’ve made up your mind for the 1,237th time that you’re done, and you pack up your belongings. (If you haven’t then just keep reading for entertainment value.) You clear out the one drawer you have in his place, (grabbing your toothbrush on the way out to really put the nail in the coffin), and slam the front door shut on your way out. Now you’ve thrown your belongings in your car, the keys are in the ignition, and you’re sitting in the driveway SO DONE WITH HIM, yet wondering why he hasn’t come outside yet to stop you from leaving.

Ok let’s fast forward. You’ve had time to decompress from that last relationship, (blocked your ex on everything, including Ebay) and you feel like you’re ready for that Sunday morning kind of love. One night you meet a guy when you’re out with your friends, and he seems to match the criteria you’ve created on your mental checklist of your next potential boyfriend. He’s wearing a button up Ralph Lauren polo, (not exactly your style but you can take him shopping later), works for a Hedge Fund, and at the end of the night calls a driver to make sure you and your girlfriends get home safely. (Yawn.) At first, you’re extremely proud of yourself because you feel like you’ve broken the cycle of the toothbrush taking, drawer unpacking, speeding out of the driveway relationships you’ve previously attracted. A month in, you’re in the passenger seat of Ralph-Lauren-button-up-wearing-good-guy’s car. You glance over, and can’t help but notice that he’s driving with his seat in an upright proper position, with his hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. This is the pivotal moment that you realize that this is not the kind of person that you want to be with. You are not the type of girl that dates a 10 and 2 kind of driver. You long for the kind of guy that sits in his car with a gangster lean, one hand on the steering wheel, one hand on your thigh, looking over at you instead of paying attention to the road, risking both your lives’.

Every relationship you are in brings out a different side of you. Different people ignite different parts from within. I personally could never be content with a this-person’s-safe type of love. A lot of people talk about their relationships, and how they’re quote un quote ‘happy’, but there is no fire. I couldn’t live without it. It takes a lot for me to be attracted to someone, and I’m not the type of person that falls in love easily.  But is it possible to have an all consuming love, with the fire, passion and respect all in one?

Everyone has different standards when it comes to love and relationships. We all have certain things that we are and aren’t willing to compromise on when it comes to a significant other. I’m not a relationship expert by any means (understatement of the century hellurrrr) but I think it’s important to never sway when it comes to your inner desires and expectations.

I don’t have an answer for each individual’s definition or idea of what love should be, but what I do know is that the most important thing in a relationship is respect. When someone respects you and values you, the fire between you is the healthy kind. The kind that keeps you on your toes, yet drives you to be a better version of yourself. What better feeling is there when it comes to a significant other, then the feeling of feeling safe with someone, the feeling of knowing that regardless if you’re in that persons’ presence or not, they’re honoring you and the bond that you have between the two of you. That’s the kind of fire that makes you want to get on a red eye and show up at their door in a trench coat and heels.

If you want to date Ralph Lauren polo wearing guy, go for it. If a guy that drives with a slight gangster lean is more up your alley then, well, we have something in common. Is it fun to be driven crazy by someone? Absafuckinlutely not. But I think there’s a fine line between being with someone out of wanting to just feel ‘safe’ but not having that fire, and being with someone that drives every single part of you;

and I don’t think life was meant to be lived just going through the motions.

A little passionate argument followed by maybe an inanimate object being thrown (such as a shoe or a McDonald’s bag of food that your boyfriend is trying to devour) never really hurt anybody. And, if it did in fact actually physically hurt someone then you’re crazier than I am and you should seek help… immediately.

I was inspired to write this post because of a blog I recently read that someone I know wrote. She wrote about her struggle with a physically abusive relationship, and reading it just ripped at my heart…. Because we had dated the same guy.

I never felt inclined to write about this topic because being vulnerable is extremely hard for me. I’m an innately private person, and to be completely honest there’s a lot of shame that comes with admitting to have gone through a physically and emotionally abusive relationship. Society doesn’t understand why anyone would just stay, and I honestly don’t blame anyone for asking that question because up until I had gone through it, I would’ve had the exact same response. Um, leave!

I have a lot of peace in writing this right now (years later) because I know that in my heart it’s something that could help someone else. People that follow me on social media see a certain side of me, in a certain light; an idyllic image if you will. But it is never and has never been my intention to create an image of perfection for the world to see. I hope if you’re reading this and you can relate to this story, that you find comfort in knowing that there is so much more than what you see on our platforms. Girls that post half naked photos in lingerie, drinking cups of coffee in different parts of the world, and post insta stories that seemingly are always up in the air on a plane, have been through some real shit too. Okkkkkur.

Several years ago I found myself in a relationship with someone that turned out to be a complete monster. The first 4 months we were together he treated me like a princess. The first time I was ever scared of him was after we had gone out to a club. I remember we got home and I immediately just laid in bed while he went upstairs. He walked into the room, got on top of me, and started choking me. I was begging him to stop, and he finally did and just passed out. I woke up the next morning and I felt like I had been in a complete fog. It didn’t feel real. This was the guy that told me all day long how beautiful I was, that brought me breakfast and coffee in bed, that told me how I had changed his life. It was so surreal that I think I almost doubted my own memory of what had happened.

I can’t remember the exact timeline of different events that occurred in my 10 month relationship with him, but I became a shell of a human being. We got into an argument in the car one time driving home, and he slammed my head into the right side window of the car. I remember walking away during an argument as he was screaming at me, and he told me if I took another step he was going to kick me down the stairs.

One night we were out and I had just gotten the vibe that something was going to happen. Anytime he would drink he would slowly get really aggressive, and I just knew that I had to get out of there. There were girls all around him and I didn’t even care, I knew I just had to leave. I was praying the whole way home that he would just go to his house and pass out. I was so scared that he would show up at my apartment and break down the door, (because it had happened before) I was shaking. I remember sleeping in the bathtub that night with a blanket and towels, thinking that if he did come, he wouldn’t think to look for me there. The nature of all of our arguments were surrounded by jealousy. I had my own apartment while we were dating, and he hated it because he didn’t want me to have any independence or anywhere that I could go to that didn’t involve him. One (of the many) times I tried breaking up with him, he showed up at my apartment and grabbed me and threw me onto the floor. Another time we had gone out and I left and went to my girlfriends house, knowing, once again, something bad was about to happen. I woke up the next morning with voicemails from inmate #12388753; He had gotten a DUI and called to let me know it was my fault. (What a turn on!) When we first met I got a phone call from Playboy and they wanted to fly me out the next day for a shoot. Initially he was so proud and excited for me, he helped me fill out a bunch of paperwork online so I could pack. As soon as I got back from the shoot he called me a slut for modeling for them. (Insert laughing emoji here.)

Right before any abuse had happened, my friends from Orlando came to stay with us. My girlfriend had started a sunglass company and wanted me to be the face of her line (I mean duh, if she picked anyone else I would have been salty) and our other mutual friend was a photographer, so it was the perfect scenario. We had been shooting all day, and obviously I was in full hair and makeup. I remember I could feel his vibe, I could tell he was jealous about me shooting with a guy, but he played it cool and was really accommodating to all my friends. Anytime I shoot I feel so happy and free, and I knew he resented that I had an outlet that wasn’t related to him that brought me so much happiness. He ended up taking all of us out to dinner and everyone spent the night, and my friends left having no idea what I was about to endure.

When we first started dating he asked me about a certain person that I had dated before him (yearsssss before him) and I never wanted to talk about it because I knew deep down he didn’t really want to hear the answer. One day he was in a good mood and just casually brought it up, asking if I had had sex with said-certain-guy. I said yes, we dated. A few days later he wanted me to come talk to him, so I walked in the room and sat down next to him. He looked at me and asked “Did you regret it?” I said, “Regret what??” “Dating that guy.” “Um… no?.” He reached down and grabbed me by my hair, and dragged me through the room, across the hall and into our bedroom. I was screaming and begging him to stop. He threw me up onto the bed, hit me in the stomach and kicked me in the side when he was standing over me. The craziest part about this is that he always had friends around. I know his guy friends were downstairs, and they had to have heard what was going on. All I can remember is yelling “Get the fuck away from me!” over and over again. That was the first time that it had ever been so severe. I scrambled to grab some outfits and my makeup case because I was late to film a show that day called “Hot Girls and Sports.” I walked to my car and he came out and was begging me not to leave him. I remember driving to set, hands on the steering wheel, just in a complete daze. I remember staring at the road thinking “Holy shit. I’m in an abusive relationship.” I was completely scared for my life. I threw my hair in a bun because I looked disheveled, and I had to go straight to set and have my smiling Aubrey Evans personality and game face on to work.

Right before the abuse started happening, one of my girlfriends had been reaching out to me all the time to help her through a toxic relationship she was in. She always told me how strong I was; I was the one person she could come to without feeling judged, and that she looked up to me for not ever taking shit from anyone. The fact that out of all people, I ended up in this kind of relationship, is what makes this story all the more visceral and frankly, like something out of a horror movie.

That night when I got back from set, I was completely empty. I knew I had to leave him, yet I was terrified that he would catch me in the middle of packing my stuff. I remember he went to the gym and texted me asking if I wanted a smoothie. I could barely even breathe, because I knew that that meant he was almost done working out, and he’d be coming home soon. If you’re reading this and you don’t understand how I didn’t just leave, then you’ve probably never been in a situation where you literally felt like you could have ended up dead.  

Soon after that he had to go to New York to film a show. He was blowing my phone up, telling me he loved me and that he would never put his hands on me again; he wanted his girl back, he wanted to be a better man for me. (In order to be a better man you have to first, be an actual man, but whatever.) His friend showed up one day at my apartment with an envelope of money. I could just tell by the look on his face that he knew what I went through. He knew that I needed to leave, and he wanted me to use it to get a new apartment. I immediately found one that I really loved; (The man upstairs was watching out for me obvy) It was impossible to get into the building unless you actually lived there, and had security guards and a guard gate; so obviously I was sold. I officially became a resident in Fort Knox.

Now, at first I hesitated in writing this last part because the fact that that wasn’t the official end is inconceivable, but this is a part of my journey and to pretend that I’ve never had weak moments would make me inhuman. Here we go. He got back from his trip and came over to my apartment. He asked me what was wrong, and I just said I can’t do this. I could never forgive you. He looked at me and said, “I need you to call your parents and tell them that I didn’t do to you what you said I did. I never kicked you, I never hit you Aubrey. It wasn’t as bad as you made it out to be. You were being dramatic.” (The term for this is ‘gas lighting’. It’s a tactic that abusive people use to make you doubt your own reality.) All of a sudden my life flashed before my eyes. He literally was trying to manipulate me in believing that none of the abuse had happened. In that moment I felt all of my inner strength come to me, and I knew in my soul that that day I was going to get my life back. I was no longer scared of him. I just started freaking out, telling him to get the F out of my apartment. I had no fear. I was no longer afraid of what he could do to me, because I knew that I had it within myself to make it through anything life had thrown my way. He was furious, but I could tell that he knew I was really done. I can’t remember anything he said but he broke a hole through my bedroom door on the way out.

And that was it.

 That was the day that changed my life forever. I looked at someone in the eye that had physically and emotionally abused me, and I freed myself. I immediately changed my phone number, and never looked back. When I was going through all of that, I never told my friends because I didn’t want them to carry the weight of what I was dealing with. I’m the type of person that will jump on a plane in a heartbeat to help my friends, and I didn’t want anyone that cared about me to have to bear the weight of feeling helpless for my situation. Anyone could just tell me “Just leave him.” But, you don’t understand. A monster doesn’t just disappear, it’s not that easy.

Some people go through life struggles and they allow themselves to become a victim because of their circumstances. I look at life in the complete opposite way. I’ve been through literal hell, but you know what? From the bottom of my heart, I’m thankful for it. Imagine life as a two way street. Imagine you’re standing on the road, and there’s two paths you can take. The path on the left is smooth, paved, and newly painted. The path on the right is bumpy, uneven and full of potholes. I always was someone that chose the unbeaten path. I never wanted to follow a road that everyone else was on, I wanted to pave my own way. Did I walk on that path knowing I was going to end up in an abusive relationship? No. I was always the girl that would be like “BYE!” the second a guy did something stupid. (And I still am that girl lol) But I truly believe that the things that are put in front of us serve a purpose.

There’s a saying. “Nothing goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” I learned so much about myself from that situation, I learned that I can make it out of anything from my own personal strength. I hesitated for so long to actually publish this specific blog, because there was a part of me that felt like people might see me as being weak for having gone through something like that. It took a long time to realize that confronting an image of weakness or shame is the last step in freeing yourself from any darkness you’ve gone through; and I know I am the woman that I am, not because of what I went through, but how I walked through the fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cosmopolitan magazine has been around since I was a pre teen. Every month there’s a different beautiful celebrity on the cover, and pasted in large bold is always a sex tip on “How to please your man!”. Before I get into my opinion on this bullshit, let me say this. I am in no way, shape or form a feminist. I just believe in women being strong, assertive and self empowered. I’m very old fashioned when it comes to “gender roles”, i.e. I believe that men should be chivalrous and open our doors for us, get out of the car and pump the gas, and when I’m dying from cramps and I want to punch you in the face, go to Walgreens and grab tampons for me. The plastic ones, NOT the cardboard. Ouch. (Just hide them under a bag of chips. Gluten free, please.) If you happen to be a guy reading this and you’re thinking “HA. There’s no way in hell I would get tampons for you, that’s emasculating.” 1. You probably don’t know what ’emasculating’ means and 2. I would’ve swept left on you on a dating app, anyways. (Is it left? Or right? I don’t know. Whichever the way that gives you the satisfaction of denying someone.)

Why is it that a magazine, every single month, is focusing on women pleasing their man? How about you turn the narrative around, and give a slow and (relatively) easy step by step instruction on how men can please us? I’m pretty sure I’m not alone when I say that there are enough “Jack of all trades, master of none” guys in the world. I’m simply stating that there’s enough men out there in the world that think they’re the masters at what they’re doing. In the bedroom. When really, in actual fact, they’ve been spending too much time watching porn and not enough time focused on what the woman that they’re with actually wants. Why does a magazine direct the pressure of our sexual experience onto us, the women? Making it seem like the entire act is pressured on us and us alone and our performance. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that a woman has to be either mentally, emotionally or physically stimulated before anything sexual can happen. This means that leading up to the act, it’s about what both people have collectively brought to the table, not just what us, women, are bringing forth. If in fact I am right, (which in this case I believe I am) why does society put the weight of our intimate experiences on us and the skills we bring to the table? Why does a magazine, that is written for women, by women and about women, make us focus month after month on how we can make our men happy? Instead of making young women believe that they need to do reverse cowgirl while doggystyle-ing (just added the ing in there. lol) and 69ing while also making a sandwich, (all at the same time in order to be a real woman), shouldn’t we be sending a different message?

Reverting back to the beginning of my post, I want to reiterate that there’s nothing wrong with writing a “how to” for women, because I’m sure we all at some point or another have wanted to expand our minds when it comes to sex. I’m saying that the dialogue this magazine (and I’m sure many others) is pushing is insinuating that if you don’t do A. B. & C., your man is going to leave you. If you’re not comfortable doing a certain thing in the bedroom, guess what? You don’t have to do it. We all have a different comfort level, we all have different inhibitions. If a man really leaves you because you aren’t doing something that he wants you to be doing (sexually), then screw him. I mean, don’t screw him. If I was a writer at Cosmo my column would be called ‘How to Show Men the Door When They Suck”, and I know that it would be dialogue that all woman can relate to. (Including myself. Obviously.)

Regardless if this magazine is intended for adults, Cosmopolitan gets in the hand of every pre teen girl and her group of friends. I understand that women out there want to know a man’s opinion on what to do and what not to do, seemingly so that we can bring our best self (aka set of skills) to the bedroom. But the point of my post is that a magazine that is supposedly meant for “women and uplifting women” shouldn’t be influencing us to believe that if you’re not doing the 113 positions as listed in article, that you’re not enough of a woman. Of course we want to get in the mind of our partners, in order to understand what they want and how to please them. That’s just a part of human nature. But I think the articles that are being published year after year pointing directly at what woman can do so their man doesn’t leave them, is sending the wrong message to our society.

Men aren’t the only ones that have standards when it comes to performance in the bedroom. (Breaking news.) Articles that are consistently based around showing women how to be “up to par” is creating an image that men are the only ones that have the power of opinion in the sex department. I’m personally waiting for ‘Mens Health’ magazine to come out with a “How to Please Your Woman” column, because there’s enough guys out there that need a step by step guide on what to do, (and more importantly what NOT to do). (Not that I know any personally or anything..)

It takes two to tango. Whether you’re straight, gay, bisexual, asexual, it doesn’t matter. Sex is such a broad spectrum, it’s a topic that we all want to read about. The articles that are put out into the world are being absorbed and influencing young women, so the dialogue that is being printed should be asserting both sides of the pendulum. Life isn’t just about what we, as women can do differently to keep a man around. We all want a great sex life. Cosmopolitan magazine should be writing about how two individuals can come together and please each other, without one person’s role being more influential then another. It’s just as much up to the man to assert himself as it is the woman.

 

 

 

 

 

My Mom enrolled me into a Catholic high school my freshman year. She thought it would be a better experience for me because the public schools I had gone to were doing nothing for me. (If I showed up to class there probably could have been a different outcome, but I guess we will never know, will we.) Moving on. The summer before my Sophomore year, I went to go live with my Dad in Wisconsin. To a little town called Beaver Dam, population 13. Give or take a thousand. Why the hell did my Dad have to move to this place in the middle of nowhere? Why couldn’t he move somewhere cool so when I left my Mom’s in Minnesota and gave her the big F YOU, (more like she actually kicked me out but whatever) I could have made it seem like I was moving on to bigger and better things?

My Dad had a townhouse right across the street from the school, which is geographically undesirable for someone like me, considering I wouldn’t be able to have any excuse to be late. My first day of school I went to the principles office to get my class schedule and figure out where I was supposed to go, since I hadn’t had the chance to go to orientation or check out the school beforehand. (Orientation is for amateurs.) My first friend that I made was this guy with blue eyes and dark hair. (I’m only describing him because I can’t remember his name. No I was not attracted to him. In case you were wondering.) He came up to me at my locker and asked me if I was new, and wanted to help show me where my classes were. I’m sure he wanted to show me something else too, but back then I didn’t even know what a penis was so that’s irrelevant. Some time not long after that, I met this guy named Edgar. He always came to my locker and wanted to walk me to my classes. He was the first guy I liked there, and I know he wanted to be the only guy that was taking me on long romantic walks to sharpen my pencils. He had asked me if I was friends with said-guy-with-blue-eyes and I said yea, he’s the first person that talked to me in school and he’s just really nice. Well, Edgar let me know that this guy had stuck his dick in a vacuum and got it stuck. So, naturally, I had to go to the source and ask him if it was true. Thinking Edgar told me this just so that I would stop being friends with him, I expected it to be untrue. I can’t remember his exact reaction, but I’m pretty sure his answer was somewhere along the lines of “It was a dare!.” As you can imagine, our friendship kind of fizzled after that. Just couldn’t get the “dick in vacuum” image out of my head.

Not too long after starting school, there were rumors swirling around about me. I remember leaving class one day to go to the bathroom, and someone had written my name in the stall along with “IS A SLUT!”. I just stared at it thinking, “WTF!. Who would hate me so much and write this about me?” One of my girlfriends pulled me aside and had told me that everyone in school was talking about me and Edgar, and how I had already had sex with him.  I couldn’t believe it. I was still the new girl in school, I had only been there for maybe a month, and people were going around saying I was a slut? I didn’t even know what sex was, i.e. what is a virgin? My parents were so strict I didn’t have a cable tv channel until I was 15 years old, so I grew up extremely sheltered. (Things got wild, let me tell you.)

Eventually I connected the dots and figured out that it was Edgar himself who had spread the rumor. I remember I went to the movies with a group of my friends, and he kept calling me. I reluctantly answered, with probably a “What do you want?” and he admitted to spreading the rumor. He apologized profusely, saying it was a dick move and he was just trying to sound cool. I remember thinking at that time how horrible it was for people to hear something about someone they know nothing about, and to pass the information along trying to defame me. I’ve never been one to conform to what everyone else is doing, or to chime in and talk badly about someone just because others are doing it. Being a female, I can say that women are the worst when it comes to friendships. Of course this experience happened at the hands of a guy, but so many times in my life I’ve seen women bash their own friends, only to hang out with them right afterwards.

So, my sophomore year of high school I was a virgin, aka a hoebag. I went to a new high school in a different state not knowing a single person in that town. I was just an innocent 15 year old trying to figure things out. I remember telling myself that I would never be a person that takes part in trying to put other people down. I was always friends with different groups of people, I never wanted to try to ‘fit in’ or be a part of anyone’s clique. I remember going to sit next to this girl named Caroline at lunch, because she would sit by herself and it seemed like she didn’t have any friends. People would say she lived in a trailer park, and I always felt bad for her because you can’t control the environment you grow up in. We don’t get to choose our parents. Or the income level that we are raised on. I’m grateful that I didn’t grow up with social media, especially with it being as prolific as it is now in our day and age. So many people jump on the bandwagon of talking badly about other people, or focusing their energy on bringing other people down.

You have to get to know people before you form opinions about them. You have to ignore negativity and gossip. People are always going to have something to say about you. Whether its good, bad, true or not true. Just because you hear something about someone, it doesn’t make it true. Especially in high school, all everyone did was spread rumors about everyone. Where are those people now? Don’t answer that, because no one cares where they are. (At least I don’t.) The most important thing you can do is to just stay true to yourself. You don’t have to follow what everyone else is doing. You don’t have to hate someone or talk badly about someone just because people around you do. I can’t be friends with people that base their conversations around other peoples’ lives’. (Did I put the apostrophes in the right places? FML. OCD. Anyways.)

I learned that people will try to bring you down just for being a big hoe bag in high school (aka a virgin) and you don’t have to let it affect you.

You know why? Because you’re not a hoe. And if you are, that’s your story to tell. Not anyone else’s.

 

 

 

 

Yesterday I was on the phone with my sister and she was telling me about her ex boyfriend. They have been on and off for awhile, and I guess he went from texting her being nice to threatening to kill himself. As I was on the phone just listening to her, all of a sudden it brought back all of these memories. Something that I didn’t remember for years until yesterday, was that my sister was suicidal when I was younger.  Growing up I was really into sports and a complete tomboy, I hated makeup and girlie things. My sister was either out with her older friends or in her room (that she had painted completely black) either reading or drawing. The one thing we had in common was that we both did everything we could to avoid having to be home. I remember always being at odds with her because she never wanted to hangout with me, and she was always really sad and lethargic. At that time I didn’t know what ‘depression’ was, and I thought she was just being lazy and feeling sorry for herself. I remember countless times her telling me and our family that she wanted to kill herself, she didn’t want to live anymore. And then she would disappear. Runaway. One time my Mom came home and told me she had gone for a drive looking for her (this is after she had been missing for probably weeks), and she said she saw her downtown just sitting next to the side of a building, but she wouldn’t get in the car with her. I would go to school so many days not knowing if I was going to come home and the cops were going to say my sister was found dead or not. I became so hurt and numb to it, I told her she should just do it because I was sick of everyday not knowing if my sister was going to be alive or dead. How horrible and insensitive is that of me? Thinking back, that memory just puts a sick feeling inside of me. Growing up I looked at her as being selfish for always telling me she wanted to die, without thinking about how that would affect her little sister, and more importantly our little brother. Even writing this pains me for the simple fact that I didn’t remember any of this until my phone call with her yesterday.

I know what it feels like to have someone that you love tell you that if you leave them, they will kill themselves. I know what it is like to get a text message saying that my ex boyfriend had just died, (my first love), after he had been trying to get back with me and I had told him no. Death is such a scary, real thing to me. Seeing someone you love in a casket that hasn’t even made it to their 21st birthday is no joke. Hearing that someone my sister loves is threatening to end his life, makes me want to do everything in my power to help, but you learn as you grow up that you can’t help people that don’t want to help themselves. If you really love someone, you don’t put the weight of your life in their hands.

I take everything in life as a valuable lesson. So many people preach that you should treat others the way they treat you, but I don’t believe in that at all. I always want to be nice to people, because you never know what they are going through behind closed doors. You never know if just being kind, or holding the door open for someone could make their day. It’s easy to judge people by the way they look, the pictures they post, the way they dress. As depressing as this post may seem, I wanted to write about it because the most valuable lessons I’ve learned have come from situations that at one time were painful. Your character gets built through the storms you make it through. Some people let the negative things they’ve been through define them, and use it as an excuse to treat others poorly. Regardless of what I’ve encountered in my life, I know that it made me the strong person I am today. I know that the things that I’ve gone through have served their purpose because they’re a reminder of where I’ve come from, and why I am the person I am today.

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always.”