Womanhood is cracking open a Diet Coke at 9:16pm because your day still just started.

I don’t know if I have considered myself a genuine, mature human until now - smack in the middle of a world pandemic. Did I just bust open a Diet Coke on a week night - absolutely. Do I regret it? Absolutely not. Clearly, “I don’t give a damn” like the boy who says “Pepsi bottle and a Coca-Cola glass…” as he pours the Pepsi in the Coca-Cola glass.

Knowingly that the Diet Coke that I was about to open flew in its’ respective Target grocery bag from the back seat to front the day before, I busted open that shaken up Diet Coke for it to explode and just give me one more fire to put out tonight. Needless to say, I welcomed my bad habit, my (legal) drug, and my fix, of not only normalizing my stress by attempting to inhibit my body’s process of hydration and stay awake, but also by taking on the challenge as I pushed my limitations to take on more responsibility. I say this jokingly as if Diet Coke was a weapon, although it may be, but mainly to shed light on my quick decision to guzzle down my caffeinated, non-alcoholic nightcap. Pressure, adversity, fear, reality and anxiety push us out of our comfort zones to either do impressive or insubordinate works. Specifically, tonight - the pressure of my recently informed deadline did a little of both: let me produce good work while making an insubordinate decision to ignore my health and stay up until 2:00am just to wake up four hours later and repeat the cycle.

Diet Coke by Alicia Gibson

Every self-help book out there tells us to get rid of these bad habits, flaws, and realizations, and most, even tell their readers how to do so. But if I am going to be brutally honest, I don’t think we should be told to erase these parts of our lives, rather use them as motivation to do better. Acknowledging our weaknesses, mistakes, and improvements only leaves us room to rally and raise the bar. Personally, I see no fault in having imperfections, poor propensities, or unyielding realism, but only if we are aware of our shortcomings.

I realized that there is only one difference between adulthood and childhood - and, surprisingly, it is not paying bills. What separates a girl from a woman and a boy from a man is simple: awareness. Awareness of bad habits. Awareness of mistakes. Awareness of flaws. Awareness of limitations. Awareness of reality. Awareness of success. Awareness of failures. To have even just one of these takes us one beat closer to the heart of awareness: Self Awareness.

It’s not just an office buzzword, but a self-defining truth: internally and externally - how we view the world and how the world looks back at us.

Know your flaws and accept them.