I am Princess Poppy.

Saturday I watched a movie with a friend. While this is a lovely memory and one I’ll cherish for years to come, the significance of this event wasn’t the friend or the movie. The significance was in the fact that I saw myself in the main character. That’s pretty common but this time it felt different. It wasn’t until much later that I realized how important my perception shift was and where it evolved from.

I’ve often seen myself through the eyes of side characters — I’m the funny best friend or the weird girl that steals the scene and becomes a meme. I have long identified with the Melissa McCarthy characters and the Fat Amy’s of the world. If I don’t see myself in that, I usually identify with characters with sad story arcs – body image issues, poverty, unrequited love, bullying —- all the things I’ve struggled with in my own life. Usually I can see so much of myself in their beginning character and I’d become obsessed with the idea of evolving into the strong heroine they’d become in the end.

This time, it was different.

We watched trolls and the character I identified most with was Poppy. Now, I know what you’re thinking — what kind of bozo is getting self-awareness messages from trolls? It’s me. Hi. I’m the problem it’s me.

Anyway – Not only is Poppy a princess, but she’s popular and bubbly and beloved by everyone. She’s determined and hopeful and radiates love and joy wherever she goes. Poppy’s love for her friends is so powerful that when her light dims, everyone’s dims. She’s confident and courageous but can admit when she’s messed up. She takes responsibility and makes hard choices to help the people she loves. She believes that everyone deserves true happiness and has the capability inside them. She’s sassy and spunky but she has a heart of gold and just wants everyone she loves to feel as loved and happy as they deserve.

Again – you may be thinking, ‘girl this is a children’s film you have lost it. Also poppy is naive and young and foolish and omg why am I arguing about this?’ — and I’m not saying any of that isn’t very accurate or valid. What’s important here is this: I identified with her and those are the traits I saw.

This is the first time in my life that I’ve watched a movie, read a book, imagined a fake scenario and I recognized myself inside a character not for the quirky, weird, disappointing or annoying traits about them and instead identified with their strengths. It’s a huge moment of clarity for me to sit back and realize just how far my perception of myself has come.

There was a time in my life where I would have thought admitting to traits like that would be considered arrogant or self centered. Today, I read them and I understand how it’s possible to fully believe I am all of those amazing things and still no better off or different than anyone else at the same time. I’m still the same weirdo that’s going to make mistakes and embarrass herself at some point but that doesn’t mean I can’t also be this positive, loving, strong, determined person as well.

I think there’s something to be said for the connection to the plot here as well: happiness is inside us all, sometimes you just need someone to show you. This makes me grateful for the friends I’ve had who’ve brought out my true happiness. Grateful that through our laughter I unlocked the doors to a cage I’d locked myself in long, long ago.

It’s like breathing clean air for the first time after a really long sinus cold. I feel refreshed and grateful for the talents/gifts/abilities that have been there all along. I feel like I’m finally stepping into the person I’ve always meant to become but could never quite reach. It’s as though someone turned the dimmer switch up and my lights finally at full brightness.

And I’m grateful to be here. To look back at March and wonder where this journey would take me or if I’d change at all just to see how far I’ve come is sometimes unbelievable. I used to identify so deeply with the ocean and its darkness and infinite depths and now I feel like an ember that’s finally been ignited and flourished into a flame.

Perspective

Every story has a villain.

Usually that villain is the catalyst for the inner growth and development of our hero.

In thinking on that logic, I’ve come to look at my life in a new lens of gratitude for my villain moments. I’m someone who recognizes I’m not perfect and have made countless mistakes that hurt others or caused some type of setback in their lives. All my life my guilt over hurting others has haunted me like a ghost, always lingering in the back of my mind. I feel immense shame at letting others down, disappointing someone or hurting their feelings. Even in times when I believe people deserve to hear the harsh truth of what I might say or my action was the best I could do at the time, I’d still walk away with the weight of guilt and shame crushing me at my core.

But if I look at my own life, the moments where I’ve felt hurt, broken, angry, or upset are usually the moments right before I’ve grown the most. They’re the moments that taught me fortitude and courage. The moments that shaped my heart to be kind and devoted to others. Other peoples villain moments became my catalyst for growth. They were my awakening. My lessons. My grit. My power.

So Im sitting here now with a sense of gratitude in my darker moments. The moments where I messed up and played the villain in someone else’s story weren’t my finest moments but they also served a purpose — you see, everyone has to have a villain. In my story, the readers are rooting for me, but in someone else’s, I may be the very thing they’re hoping to defeat. But the gift is that there are lessons to be learned on both sides. In my darker moments I had to be knocked down to learn the lesson in that story, but then I also had to learn how to save myself and get back up in my own.

For so long I’ve suffocated under this idea that I wasn’t a good enough person because of all the terrible things I’ve done in my past. But tonight I breathe easier having accepted that it’s possible to be both the hero of my own story and the villain of someone else’s. It’s possible to celebrate my triumphs and hard work and recognize that the person I was then didn’t know as much as the person I am now. It gives me hope to truly give everyone the benefit of the doubt in their ability to change and grow and just recognize that I am not the author of their story so I don’t get to dictate how that plot line plays out.

It’s also possible that my moments of triumph are the moments of pain and loss for someone else. There’s still beauty and gratitude to be found in these moments. In my own story, my losses and my pain shaped my strength and determination. In that pain, I’d compare and compete and judge myself against those who’d beaten me or won. I’d feel inferior, unworthy, and unremarkable, caged in by all the people around me who were better, smarter, more talented and certainly more beautiful. Tonight it’s like finally unlocking that cage and opening the door to the world beyond. Someone else getting their triumph or happy ending in their story doesn’t have to mean I’ll never get mine, it’s just not that point in my story. Not every book is a chapter book. Some books are series that never seem to end, some are duologys. Some are standalone happily ever afters and some have thousands of retellings. Each story is paced differently and I can only control the pacing in my own.

So as I sit here rooted in gratitude I’m thankful the most for the shift in perspective I’ve been given. I went from treating myself like a side character in my own story, to realizing I’m not only the main character, I’m the author. More than that, I am not the author of someone else’s story. In those I may be just a side character, I may be a mentor, a lover, a villain— but I’ll never be the author. Part of the acceptance of the role I play in others story’s and the influence I have, it really helps me let go of some of the weight of guilt and shame and comparison. While I strive to do good and treat others well, mine is not the only story being told right now. It’s inevitable that I won’t be the hero in every story ever told and not trying to live up to that impossible standard is a breath of fresh air.

This might be the part in my story where I crossed the veil and became the narrator to help myself finally learn the lessons these darker moments have been trying to teach me all along.