For my gurls (L) xox

Recently I’ve been very much enjoying dragging up the past every Thursday to celebrate #tbt. It was only last week that I came across a photograph hidden away in the depths of Facebook from about five years ago, of me and the girls looking ridiculously different. It was one of those cringey moments when you look at an old picture of yourself and criticise everything about your appearance, which shortly led on to an in depth discussion of certain other life choices. 'Look at my hair’, ‘What is that dress?', ‘Why did I think my make-up looked good like that?!’ We all came together in a sea of comments and hated on ourselves for the decisions we had made half a decade ago. Darwin once said, ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.’  I couldn’t help but strongly suspect that in five years from now, I will look back on my most recent photos and yet again question every decision I made. Is this fair though? Don’t we act on what’s going on around us? When I look back on myself, I feel completely different. The decisions I make today (or rather the decisions I made then) are completely different to the ones I would make now. Sure I’m older, and dare I say it wiser? But isn’t it about more than that? We grow up in a world that’s so fast paced and so incredibly diverse, that we adapt in accordance. Darwin said that the ones who survive are the ones who could adapt to change. We restyle our hair depending on the trends we see, we throw out old clothes and buy new, to follow what’s en-vogue. We let go of people who hold us back, those who aren’t worthy of our time, and we surround ourselves by the ones who appreciate us and make us happy. Most of the time, we look back and feel superior to our old selves - is this because we knew that we had made hard decisions, learnt tough lessons, let people go and let people in, all to make us who we are today? We look back on past relationships, people who treated us badly and we criticise ourselves, ‘why did I put up with that for so long?’

I realised that as a group of girls we had been friends since we were six years old and we had helped each other through so much. The world spins and we all move together, some race ahead and others move more slowly, but it’s reassuring to remember that the ones who are closest in our hearts, are running at the same pace and we’ll always pick each other up if one falls down.