Life is never easy. It will try to bring you down most of the time, hit you hard in hard face and play jokes on you. And it’s up to you if you will choose to sulk and cry or if you will punch it harder in the face and prove that life might tough but you as a person is tougher.

I was an outcast during my high school days, a bullied girl who doesn’t have her own group of friends. I have experienced body-shaming because of my fats, I have experienced being called “hippopotamus”, “balyena”, “ugly” and every hateful words that a high schooler could ever experience. It was hard, indeed, but I can say that those days helped in molding me into who I am today.


During times, I was told that a girl should be pretty; her body should be slim and sexy. And I know, I don’t fit in their category of “beautiful”. Believing in myself became harder each day. My confidence had inflated to a negative level. My view about life became darker. And getting out of bed just to go to school, became harder and harder.


But guess what? My parents have told me that no matter what other people say about me, I can be whoever and whatever I want to be. I can be a writer, an actor, a teacher or an engineer. I can be anything as long as I believe in myself and it makes me happy.


Here I am now. From the bullied girl came out a stronger version of myself. A girl who believed in herself despite of all the backslash of others, a girl who lived a life that gave her happiness. From the outcast came out a woman who knows that beauty doesn’t have a category, and that you shouldn’t box yourself in the idea of other.

 Everyone is beautiful in their own unique way. You can be slim or you can be plump, but you are still beautiful. As cliché as it may sound, but beauty doesn’t only from the outside appearance; beauty can be seen inside of us.

Life is never easy. It will try to bring you down most of the time, hit you hard in hard face and play jokes on you. And it’s up to you if you will choose to sulk and cry or if you will punch it harder in the face and prove that life might tough but you as a person is tougher.

#OPPOF5 #CaptureTheRealYou #NUFFNANGPHILIPPINES #AGIRLANDAWOMAN