This post was originally written and posted at allyspotts.com, before I was married. If you would like to share your confession visit Prodigal Magazine and join the other voices there.

Here’s my confession: I hate being a girl.

I hate being a girl. In fact I don’t even want to talk about it.

Bible verses like 1 Peter 3:4 freak me out. I read them and think – wait, a beautiful woman has to have a gentle and quiet spirit?

I hate words like gentle and quiet. I don’t feel like I am either of those things.

The worst is talking about the “Biblical picture of submission.” Everything in me cringes when I hear the word submission. I don’t want to submit. Not if submitting means surrendering to something or someone that isn’t safe.

I live in a world that sometimes feels like a dangerous place.

I spent most of my life avoiding femininity because I worried that femininity made me weak. Who is supposed to protect me if I don’t protect myself?

I was friends with mostly men. I identified with them, even when it wasn’t honest. I talked about the things they wanted to talk about, did the things they liked to do. I projected strength in places where I didn’t feel strong. I competed with them just to prove that I could win.

The problem with competition is that it requires the defeat of one of two opponents. Masculinity and femininity work in tandem. If we compete with one another, one or the other of us will fail. We can’t be opponents and still be on the same team.

Learning how to be feminine wasn’t just about wearing lip gloss or flirting with a guy or asking for help, although my journey has included all of those things (I believe this looks different for every person). It was about choosing to believe that my femininity was not a burden to me.

My femininity is my greatest asset.

Femininity required establishing good boundaries, drawing lines around the things that were important to me. That wasn’t easy. It meant deciding what was important to me, which took a ton of hard work.

Once I learned what was important to me, I had to choose to stand by my convictions, even if it meant losing a relationship. Femininity meant learning to say no, without apologies.

What I learned is that when I was willing to say NO it gave incredible power to my yes.

Femininity isn’t harsh because it doesn’t need to be. When femininity speaks, people listen. Real femininity is powerful. Real femininity is strong.

–Allison Vesterfelt

This post was originally apart of a blog series hosted by AllySpotts.com. This series is now hosted by Prodigal Magazine. Check out the rest of the confessions there, and submit your own.

I hate myself

I don’t even like to speak out loud the names that I was given in high school.

I never set out to hate myself. I never planned to go there. But in no time at all I went from happy kid to distant and depressed young man.

The journey started so long ago, I honestly cannot remember where it started. I just remember moments along the way.

I remember being really lonely. Loneliness perpetuated depression, which gave way to isolation, which made me even more lonely…

That’s the thing with name-calling. When we receive the names we are called it is really isolating.

“Dirty D”… “Bitch Tits”

Who would blame a boy for hating the way he looked with names like that? And those names haunted me. They built a prison of insecurity that I lived in for years.

Lets not forget about the fact that depression fueled my unhealthy eating habits. And those unhealthy habits shaped the shame I felt. A dizzying cycle.

I honestly believed that I was not worth anything.

Depression turned to rage.

And if you called me a name, I would fight you. Because I was supposed to be a man. Men don’t cry and men don’t let other people push them around.

The only alternative was to punch you in the face.

Rage turned into passive insecurity.

Because rage wasn’t who I was, it wore me out. It wasn’t me. And anyone who would give me attention had mine. It felt good to be wanted, so I gave myself to anyone who gave an inch.

And I took a mile.

But getting what you want because you take it isn’t really receiving. It’s stealing. And that is where I lost myself.

My insecurity looked like aggression. And why did that insecurity have the right to dictate a false reality to my existence?

I hated that person. But that person wasn’t me.

–Darrell Vesterfelt