10:13 pm - medals and ribbons

I’ve been losing a lot lately.

If this had been me a year ago, I would have been a wreck. I would have stared at my shelf, agonizing over the lack of new trophies, wondering what was wrong with me, wondering why I couldn’t seem to clutch the gold I thought I deserved. I believed that if I didn't come home with a first-place ribbon or medal in hand, I had practically wasted the entire day.

But oddly enough, right now, I don’t feel that horrible about losing. In fact, I feel strangely all right. Somewhere in the last few months, I started to realize that maybe I’d been chasing the wrong definition of “winning.”

Girls State.

When I didn’t get Governor, when I wasn’t chosen to go to Girls Nation, I felt the sharp sting of disappointment. I had pictured it all, and when that door closed, I sat with the silence of it.

But then came the last night of the week. My roommate, a sweet girl with cerebral palsy, turned to me. She thanked me for being there for her, for helping her when she was campaigning, for drawing posters late at night and persuading people, for simply being present. She said that at her last summer camp, her roommate had ignored her completely. She had felt invisible.

Had I been Governor, I never would have had the time to sit with her, to cheer her on, to remind her that she mattered. I didn’t walk away with a title, but I walked away knowing that my presence had changed someone’s week, maybe even the way she thought about herself. And for the first time, I wondered if maybe that was a kind of victory too.

Distinguished Young Women.

A few months later came Distinguished Young Women. This time, I did win something. It wasn’t first place overall, it wasn’t the grand title I had secretly longed for, and the girl who did win deserved it entirely, and I felt no bitterness, only pride in her.

But what surprised me most wasn’t the results. It was the way the competition opened me up. I sang in front of people for the first time. I danced, even aerobics dance, something I would’ve once rolled my eyes at but ended up loving. And then came the interview, the moment I had thought would be my strength.

The judges asked: “On your info sheet, you wrote that your grandpa is your hero. Why?”

I began to answer, but the words cracked in my throat. Suddenly I couldn’t speak. My eyes blurred, my voice trembled, and before I knew it, I was crying. Standing there, completely undone in front of five strangers who were rapidly making notes on their notepads. I hate crying in front of friends. But judges? That's unheard of. I tried to will myself to stop, to collect the polished poise I had promised them, but I couldn’t. My face was wet, my voice was broken, and I hated it.

Later, in the car, I told my mom, and she started crying too. She told me that I never cry at my grandpa’s grave, and that sometimes she worries that I've forgotten him. I assured her that was very untrue. Somehow, grief sneaks up not on the days you expect it, but on the ones that catch you off guard. On a random interview day, on a stage under bright lights, his memory cracked me open in a way that the silence of a cemetery never had.

I didn’t win the title. But I walked away with something harder to define: a reminder that the people we love live on in us, sometimes surfacing when we least expect it. That memory was its own kind of gift.

Winning, I’ve learned, doesn’t always mean walking away with the crown or the medal or the title. Sometimes it means helping someone else shine. Sometimes it means discovering that you’re braver, more open, more capable than you ever believed. Sometimes it means allowing yourself to cry when you’ve spent years holding it in.

Mind you, I do and will still try my very hardest to win that first place, but maybe winning is less about the spotlight.

If I had won every time, maybe I wouldn’t have learned any of this. Maybe I would still think winning was about the trophies on my shelf instead of the person I am becoming.

So yes, I've been losing a lot lately, but I've also been winning.