Now I will be honest.

I have believed lies. Present tense, believe. I believe lies. In my head, I know them to be false, but my heart has latched onto them. They are poisoning me from the inside out.

While people, my friends, tell me otherwise, it seems as though it is still expected that I get up each morning and put on my "happy face," that I'm not allowed to answer "I feel pretty shitty" when people ask me how I am, mostly because I'm supposed to care that they feel uncomfortable when confronted with honesty.

I've also believed the lies that the culture has fed me. Lies that say I need to be thin, have fabulous clothes, perfect skin and hair, be bubbly and outgoing, laid-back (and not the Type A that I am), and happy all the damn time, that I'm not supposed to be 27 and working at Starbucks unless I'm in school.

I'll confess to you that one of the reasons I want to start exercising more (other than the obvious of being healthy) is that I stepped on the scale last week and didn't like the number staring back at me and because I feel like a whale. I'll confess to you that I'm one of those women who doesn't like to leave the house without makeup on because of her blemishes and acne scars, and when I get complimented on my beautiful skin it takes every ounce of will power to just bite my tongue and say "thank you."

I know that other people feel this way, that they open their eyes in the morning and would give anything to not have to get out of bed. That sometimes they're just sad or angry for no decent reason other than that life is hard and unfair and that sometimes they feel like they're being crushed under the weight of simply existing. I know other people feel this way, and I also know that they don't talk about it.

I feel as though I'm supposed to have undergone some sort of personal change in all this confessing, that now I'm supposed to go forth and not give two shits about what anyone says or thinks. But that's not what's going to happen.