Lianna Holston: Embarrassing moments

Well hello to you.

I write you from my room in Oxford atop a floral yet masculine comforter. I just finished the television series Miranda (find the first season of it on Netflix it’ll change your life), and as a tribute to one of my personal heroes I thought I’d do this post in her honor.

At the impressionable age of four, my preschool best friend Andy convinced me to write my name on one of the classroom erasers. Her conclusive argument was “all the Kindergarteners are doing it.” My chubby child fingers sloppily scrawled LIANNA onto an innocent and unsuspecting Pink Pearl. I had to buy a new eraser for the class.

When I was eight years old I dressed up as a lobster for Halloween. The costume included a lobster head that encompassed my entire face, as well as two enormous claws stuffed with cotton. Unfortunately, that year my family attended a fancy Halloween dinner party at which there were many elegant pieces of sparkly home decor. I, with my crow-like attraction to anything shiny but burdened by my lack of depth perception and enormous pincers, broke a very fancy candle when I tried to reach out and touch it. We were not invited back.

I had a crush on the same person from 2nd-5th grade because he looked like Harry Potter. Let’s call him Daniel. He had a not-so-subtle crush on one of my best friends, often showering her in gifts and love letters. Daniel and I started chatting on Gmail’s G-chat when I was ten, and that was where I really turned on the charm. It worked, too. Daniel sent me an email informing me that he liked my friend 80% and me 20%. Over the next few weeks those percentages decreased and increased, respectively, until at last I was updated (in the sign-off line of an email I later printed out and hid under my pillow) that he liked me 100%. Before school started one day Daniel tried to give me a gift as a token of his internet-sworn affection: a mixtape. I got flustered and attempted to run away, but it had been snowing that morning so I slipped and fell before I got to the stairs. My keychain-ridden rolling backpack landed atop me. Daniel transferred schools the next year. It didn’t work out.

I should have known. The first song on the mixtape was Fall Out Boy’s “Thnks fr th Mmrs.”

In the seventh grade I asked my teacher if he had any extra algebra problems that I could do over the weekend “just for fun.”

My entire freshman year of high school was a social train wreck because I kept introducing myself as my brother’s little sister assuming everyone would know who my brother was. They did not.

I initially created an Instagram account during sophomore year of high school because I wanted to take “hipster photos” of our “chemistry labs.”

Senior year of high school we thought it would be fun n flirty to paint GO PATRIOTS on our stomachs for our homecoming football game. Our school colors were green and white so we alternated colors. I set the pattern because I was so pale that the white paint blended in with my skin, so I had to have a green letter.

P for Pale

Just before leaving for college I was driving to the gym (tbt to pre-freshman 15 me) and I saw a puppy on a walk and I CRIED because I didn’t know when I was next going to see a dog.

Last summer I tripped and fell in front of the entirety of Oxford’s all-male a cappella group Out of the Blue while they were singing in a circle atop a mountain at sunrise. Fortunately most of them were too busy harmonizing to notice.

Obviously there have been many less-than-graceful moments in my time at college, but most of them have to do with boys and ~who knows~ who’s reading this.

The POINT of all this, and what the show Miranda is all about, is learning to accept and love ourselves as we are instead of the people that others want us to be. Nobody is anywhere near perfect yet we hold ourselves to these crazy high standards, and beat ourselves up if we don’t live up to them. Cut yourself some slack. Don’t change yourself because you think it’ll make someone else happy. Chances are their validation won’t solve your problems. Embrace your flaws! Eat a piece of cake every now and then! You’re worth it. You’re deserving of love from others, but more importantly you’re deserving of love from yourself.

I still have the entirety of the film National Treasure memorized.

Lianna “It was 1832 on a night much like this” Holston