LOH120|| Not The Regular Girl.

Hello ladies of hive✨ This is my entry into the #LOH120 contest. You can find the contest here.The contest has two intriguing prompts but I would answer the second prompt.

Do you have a virtue that some people would consider a defect?
Tell us about that misunderstood virtue!

Virtues can be described as the strength in the face of pain or grief according to the oxford dictionary but I'm not going to be discussing courage from this angle. I'd be looking at courage as the ability to demonstrate bravery by being yourself.

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Growing up, I wasn't that girl that liked pink colours or barbie movies.I was that girl that liked dark colours and loved everything super mario, both the movie and the game. That was very odd and my parents even started wondering where they went wrong.

I can't count the number of times they tried to impose girly things on me, especially pink colour because they thought pink is the colour associated with girls. Their act of imposing made me hate the colour even more.

The fact that I stood my ground up till this moment demonstrates my courage. People (not me) have had issues concerning my general lifestyle. They are constantly pained at the fact that I can't 'behave like a normal girl' in their words. Whenever I ask what their definition of 'a normal girl' is, they go ahead to paint a picture of the celebrity crush. " A normal girl wears gowns or skirts and not trousers. A normal girl laughs pretty and not like a hyena. A normal girl is meek and can be swirled around. A normal girl likes pink or blue and not white or black. Their 'a normal girl' list is very lengthy. Whenever I'm faced with this type of situation, I just listen. Me listening doesn't change my mind. I'm just doing what an abnormal girl does and that is giving you an audience even when I'm not interested in your stereotype or the picture you're painting.

PS: I still wear skirts and gowns not because they say I should, but because I feel like and that's what matters the most.

Many times, my courage has been misinterpreted. There was this time in highschool where I got severely punished for looking a senior student straight in the eyes. It turned out that every single classmate of mine was afraid of this senior student, except me of course. As long as she wasn't holding a gun to my head, what was there to be afraid of. I did all the things I was supposed to do and didn't break any school rules.

During my hours of severe punishment whenever her mate asked why I was being punished, she would say, " this little girl eyed me" with no form of evidence whatsoever. I didn't die from the punishment that day and I didn't change either. I kept looking her in the eyes till she graduated. There was nothing else she could do than spite me for my courage. In this scenario, the senior student saw my courage as a defect that needed to be punished but I still stood my grounds either way.

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Whenever I get the opportunity to talk to someone, I never forget to tell them that they should be themselves. Don't be easily swayed. Stand your ground and do what's right. Stop trying to live how people want you to live. Nobody out there is perfect, everyone has an issue but no one would tell you about their issues. You may feel that everything is rosey and smooth for them till you spend a day in their shoes.

Here I am today, living my life to the fullest and grasping every chance I have to show my courage. If I stopped smiling when people asked me to or if I stopped writing when my middle school English teacher dumped my first story book in the dustbin, I would have been a very miserable soul today. Now I blow bubbles and live life....feels good😅

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Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.
-Maya Angelou.

With love, wongi ✨