A 17-Year-Old from Maine Just Won a National Medal for Raising Awareness
I know some of my posts wouldn't make you think this necessarily, but I don't like doing emotions. Emotions and feels -- not my thing. But I'm about to dabble, because this is related to this Maine teen crushing life and winning this award.
I wouldn't want to grow up in today's world. Not because of politics. Not even because of the wonky way schools make you do math now. The main reason? Kids are mean. And I used to think they were mean back when I was growing up, but this is a completely different crop of kids.
Back when I grew up, we had payphones and house phones. That was about it. So if you were going to get picked on or bullied, it was at least to your face -- on the bus, at the bus stop, in the locker room, on the playground, etc. And at least as soon as you got home, it was over for the day.
But it's a totally different ballgame now.
Kids are MEAN. Bullying on social media is like honestly become more of "America's pastime" than baseball ever was. And I mean that for all ages ranging from kids to adults. But kids just can't escape it now -- they can't escape the smack talk. They can get it all day in school. Even before school through social media. After school with texts. And don't even get me started with group texts than can go around.
I was bullied growing up. 7th grade was probably the worst year of my life (and I'll be thankful if it forever stays that way). I'm thankful that I made it through it all. But again, different ballgame these days. Which is why I respect Jenna Booth so much, and I've never even met her.
Because according to Channel 8 WMTW, Scarborough's Jenna Booth, a senior at Cheverus High School, just won the President's Service Volunteer Award for raising awareness of eating disorders.
It honestly breaks my heart that some people, female or male, don't think they're physically good enough. And it's not that they think there's something wrong with them physically, it's the fact that they think they have to go to such drastic measures to feel like they're "good enough" or fit in. And the sad part is it can stay with some people throughout their entire life; they'll literally look in the mirror and see a completely different person than the rest of the world sees -- and it's not in a positive way.
Not to sound all tree-huggerish, but we really need to be better to each other. Be nicer. And most importantly, we need to figure out how to love ourselves regardless of how we look, how we sound -- regardless of anything superficial. Kudos to Jenna for figuring that out early in life. And not only figuring it out, but creating her own website to sell "Truly Me" sweatshirts to raise money for Sweetser, which is a Saco, Maine-based eating disorder program.