Your Boyfriend's Exgirlfriend

Have you ever used Facebook to creep on your ex's new girlfriend or even your boyfriend's exes? I'm guilty of it and I'm sure a lot of you are too. Jake was with his ex for a long time before he met me. She goes to the same school as us and we have some mutual friends. Whenever I see her or a picture of her, I immediately am filled with disgust and anger.

But why?

Is there some unwritten rule that we have to hate each other?

I don't fully understand it. Why do we automatically hate that girl, even if we've never met her? Obviously we have something in common, because at one point, we had similar taste in men. We probably have some other things in common as well. Maybe if we didn't have that one thing in common, we might have even been friends. In fact, we probably would be friends. I'm sure we'd get along great, actually.

I don't know anything about her besides the negative things that Jake has told me and that our mutual friends have told me. I've never heard a positive thing about her. But no girl in her right mind would tell me all these wonderful things about her; it's just not something we do. Girls love drama and gossip and we love rumors. It's just a fact.

But thinking about all of this makes me wonder what would happen if we actually did have a conversation. Would it be filled with rage? Would we act like typical girls and be at each other's throats? That's the first thing that comes to mind. Most girls' first reactions would be ones of anger. But clearly we have things in common. So why can't we be friends, or even just be civil to each other?

I guess the short story is that we don't have to be filled with anger when thinking about awkward situations such as these. Kill 'em with kindness. Be the bigger person and be friendly. Maybe we could start a revolution in girl world.

What Makes You Beautiful

In today's society, women are expected to be 5'8 and 115 pounds. They are expected to have painted faces and airbrushed blemishes. They wear the latest trends by the most fashionable designers, and show a large area of skin. But while that may be something to look at, it's not real beauty.

Real beauty stems from what is inside your mind. It comes from your experiences and your knowledge of the world. It comes from the way you carry yourself. It comes from your motivation and dreams and goals for your life.

Our bodies are inherently beautiful, no matter what society says.

We're beautiful because our bodies were beautifully crafted to, one day, bear children. We are special because we have the ability to become a mother. In my humble opinion, motherhood is the most beautiful thing. We need to take care of our bodies so that we can be prepared in case we decide we want to have children.

That's reason enough to love our bodies, just the way they were made. We don't need surgery to fix the blemishes. We don't need to show it off like a piece of meat in order for it to be beautiful.

If you want to become more beautiful, instead work on your mind. Learn as much as you can and show the world grace and kindness. Real men fall in love with our minds. I promise that when a man falls in love with your mind, he won't care what your body looks like.

I'll say it...

Girls drive me nuts.

They're catty, rude, and sometimes just downright stupid. But I can't complain because I used to be just like the dumb girls you probably know. That was, until I grew up. And I don't mean "grew up" by turning 22 or starting my senior year of college. I mean I matured. It happened overnight. Seriously. I used to party a lot. I was never a "good girl" in college and I won't lie about it. I drank most nights and I really have no idea how I passed my classes. I made a lot of mistakes. Some of them, I regret. But that's not the point. The point is, I was one of those girls with the jerk boyfriend.

You know, the one who is "in love" with him and can't leave no matter what he does. I'll be honest, there were times I wanted to. There were times I thought about it. God only knows why I didn't just do it, because I really should have. He cheated on me several times for no good reason at all, and the worst part is that I let him. I let him walk all over me. And then one day, it just all fell apart: my fake happy persona, my pretend relationship, my life.
And it took me a long time to get over it. And I mean a LONG time. This is where the mistakes come into play. I made a lot of them. I was a walking disaster. And then something really bad happened. Something I don't really like talking about. But it made me grow up. I spent the whole night crying and wasting perfectly good mascara. The next morning, I woke up and made a promise to myself that I would change for the better.

So I did. I literally grew up overnight. To this day, I don't know how it happened. But I stopped drinking regularly, I stopped acting like I deserved to be treated like a dumb girl, and I started holding my head a little higher. It took me a few months to start believing I deserved better, but eventually something just clicked. And four months later, I returned to the small college town to face my mess and started my senior year of college. I focused on my classes and rarely went out. When I did go out, I went home by myself. And then something amazing happened.

I met the man of my dreams. It's crazy how when you pull yourself together, your life just suddenly starts falling into place. Being in that town was the last place I wanted to be, but all of a sudden, I was happy to be there. I went from the girl with the baggage to the girl with a smile.

So if you're still with me, I'm telling you that you can do it too. If you're that girl with a life like my past and you desperately want to let go, just do it. Jump. I promise it's worth it. It's worth being alone for months and crying yourself to sleep. It's cliché, but they say pain is just weakness leaving the body. I'm pretty sure they're right.

If you're the girl with the crappy boyfriend you just can't seem to lose, I don't want to tell you to dump him, even though I so badly want you to. But I will tell you that feeling alone in a relationship is ten times worse than feeling alone and actually being alone. The relationship that makes you feel alone is the wrong one.

We were never created to be alone. With my whole heart, I believe this. If you've read the Bible at least once in your life, you know that Eve was created from Adam's rib. And she wasn't just created to put up with his crap. Don't believe that joke for a second. She was created to be his companion. And companionship is a two-way street. We were never meant to be alone. You don't have to be. Yes, it's going to suck when you let that relationship go. It's going to hurt. But it's the good kind of hurt. It's the kind of hurt that makes you stronger.

I promise you that there are bigger and better things ahead when you just let go.