Entertainment has been a big part of Lily Collins’s life since her childhood. In 2009, Lily made her film debut in the Academy Award–nominated film The Blind Side, and in 2016, she was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in Warren Beatty’s Rules Don’t Apply. Her other projects include the films Mirror Mirror; The English Teacher; Stuck in Love; The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones; Love, Rosie; To the Bone; Okja; and Halo of Stars, as well as the TV series The Last Tycoon. Lily also has a passion for journalism, which she discovered at the age of fifteen while working for Elle Girl UK. Later, she was a contributing editor for CosmoGirl and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. Lily has always strived to empower young people to use their voices, starting in high school, where she trained to be a teen therapist. Within the last few years, she has taken part in national events focused on encouraging today’s youth to stand together and speak out. This is Lily’s debut book.
For all those who have ever felt alone …
To the incredibly inspiring young women around the world whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting in person or on social media: Thank you for your constant support, passion, encouragement, and love. Your bravery to bare your souls and share your stories has inspired me to do the same.
I USED TO be extremely insecure about my eyebrows. They’ve always had a mind of their own.When I moved to LA in elementary school, thin brows were the “in” thing. But since I was only six at the time, I wasn’t paying attention to the media or the fashion world, nor did I feel the desire to change according to trends. I just knew I looked different. Once I hit twelve, though, and my preteen insecurities developed, I became very aware of my brows. They were all I could see when I looked in the mirror. They were so big and bushy and took up half my face. Kids started to make mean comments about them and it really got to me. Desperate for the insults to stop, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
One night before my mom and I were going out for dinner, I took a pair of tweezers and went to tow on my brows. After what felt like forever, I stood back and admired myself in the mirror. I thought I’d done an amazing job: they each had a nice arch and looked even and equally separated. I was super proud! My mom and I drove to the restaurant and got a table without mentioning my plucking job. I was so nervous to know what she thought, I’d avoided her eyes the whole car ride. Well, that was no longer possible once we were across from each other at the table. My mom just sat there, staring at me, and asked what I’d done to my face. At first she genuinely couldn’t figure out what was different, until it finally clicked. I said I thought my eyebrows looked great. She said she did not. She informed me I’d plucked half of them off and now they were two lines straight across my forehead. I refused to believe her, getting defensive and trying to justify why I’d done it. Then I went to the bathroom and stared long and hard at myself. Ugh, she was right. They really did look a hot mess. I couldn’t believe it. I was instantly regretful and sulked back to the table. My mom tried to make me feel better, but then added that they might never grow back, which did NOT help. I was not only annoyed with myself but also terrified that my once-luscious (though somewhat unwieldy) brows were forever thinned out and I’d always look like a fool.
Well, BrowGate definitely taught me an important lesson. I’d let other kids’ negative comments affect me, and then I’d let my insecurities lead me to alter my appearance and make a big mistake. Which was exactly why my mom was upset. She wanted me to recognize that I’d tried to change one of my features to fit in. I hadn’t seen my thick, bushy brows as beautiful; I’d seen them only as something that made me different. So she taught me the mantra “The quirky things that make you different are what make you beautiful.” Different shouldn’t be considered a bad thing. Different is beautiful!
Luckily, my brows did grow back… albeit after quite some time. And I never went crazy on them again. It took me a while to fully embrace how prominent and unique they are, but once I did, I never went back! While I am still faced with negative comments online every day—people saying that I should shave or wax them off, that I’m too hairy—I just laugh and roll my eyes. I’ve grown so attached to my brows (and they to me) over the years. They’ve become my signature feature! Aside from the internet trolls, I get compliments on them all the time. I’ve even been asked by people if they could touch them. It’s like they’re rubbing the stomach of a Buddha statue for good luck! Despite being slightly confused by all this fuss, I’m super flattered. My brows have become a characteristic that defines me, rather than a characteristic that defines how I feel. They’re part of who I am, and that’s exactly the point: they’re part of what makes me me. A trademark. There’s only one of each of us in this world, so all those quirks that define us are special things that should be embraced, never pushed away.
Quirky isn’t only about the physical characteristics we’re born with. It can also be about our personality traits. Growing up, I was fascinated by what made people tick and loved finding any excuse to socialize with strangers. I genuinely wanted to meet new people from all walks of life and get to know them, and I craved the gratification that came from making others and, by extension, myself happy. I used to go up to people on the street and compliment them, telling a lady I liked her shoes, hair, dress, you name it, or even telling a guy he was handsome. My friends found it so weird, and they definitely didn’t understand where I got the guts to do it—being super extroverted wasn’t their style. Like the time I was nine and waiting on line at an amusement park with my mom and, with her approval, I approached this intriguing-looking thirtysomething guy in line in front of us. I told him I thought he was cute. I then asked him to sit next to me on the roller coaster because I was scared and knew his cuteness would distract me. As you might expect, he was thrown at first but, eventually, ended up caving. See! I was always weirdly brave around strangers, compelled to interact with them and befriend them even at the risk of embarrassing myself. I still remember going up to a heavily tattooed guy on a Harley-Davidson in Venice Beach when I was six and telling him in my sweet, innocent British accent that his tattoos were very pretty. Now, I’m sure that wasn’t what he was expecting, nor what he wanted to hear in front of his fellow bikers, but I bet it made him smile on the inside. And I think that’s why I did it. Not because I expected anything in return, but because I was never afraid to put myself out there in order to make someone else feel better. Which is very similar to what I often do as an actor: I help bring to life stories that I hope will make people feel comforted or happy. And there’s nothing wrong with wanting to spread a little happiness. It’s beautiful.
This sort of quirky free-spiritedness didn’t stop there. Ever since I was little, I’ve sought out the company of people much older than me. As a kid I didn’t care that a grown-up and I had seemingly little in common, because once we got chatting, we had lots to say. Sometimes I even had more to talk about with them than with kids my age. Adults would ask me all kinds of questions about my generation and what certain words meant or what was cool. And I found them world-wise and hilarious. In fact, I made sure to include my friends’ moms in conversations, while my friends would have rather ignored them. Being so close with my own mom, I loved hearing her friends’ stories and found their conversations really interesting. Maybe it was considered odd that I was socializing with people triple my age, but I genuinely didn’t think twice about it. And the wisdom they imparted to me was really valuable. Being open and nonjudgmental is an incredible thing. After all, it’s how we’d want others to be toward us.
So who cares if some people didn’t understand my outgoing nature or my love of socializing! Who cares if I was often the youngest person in the room! I’ve realized that whenever I feel self-conscious about any of my quirks, it’s because I assume people are judging me. That’s where the danger lies. You damage your own self-image when you compare yourself to others and to what you see in the media. And even though I’m in those magazines, movies, and shows, for a long time, I still did it, too. But once I accepted myself as I am, quirks included, it didn’t matter how others viewed me because I liked what I saw. When people point out your differences as negative, it’s only because they’re insecure themselves. It can be extremely hard not to take personally, but the second we allow that to happen, we give power and truth to their words.
I may not have always behaved—hell, I may not always behave now—in a way that was expected, but how boring would it be if we all followed the same rules and did what was expected? Yeah, pretty damn boring. So let’s proudly share our quirks. Be you and embrace your differences as things that make you unique and special. “Different” shouldn’t be considered confusing, negative, or something that divides us. It should be a quality we applaud and admire within ourselves and others. Whenever I sense any self-doubt creeping in to make me feel like an alien, I repeat my mom’s mantra to myself—“The quirky things that make you different are what make you beautiful”—and I remember that standing out in a crowd is much more rewarding than blending in.
I’VE FOUND THAT some people are really great at hiding. Pretending. Lying. Lying about what they feel, what they believe, and about who they are entirely. Their lies are habitual, practically subconscious, and exceptionally damaging. And sometimes I didn’t realize I’d fallen into them, and those are the times when I became the most entangled, most lost, and most hurt.
I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. Growing up in LA—a place deeply fascinated by celebrity—I got really good at recognizing the ulterior motives of kids who wanted to be my friends. I could see right through their insincerity. Despite developing those observational skills early on, years later I still found myself in a romantic relationship filled with deceit, infatuation, codependency, and some pretty dark shit. However hard it is to admit, I know now that I fell for his persona, the one he desperately wanted everyone to believe. Whenever anyone with a position of any kind of power (real or imagined) chooses you over everyone else, it’s natural to get caught up in that. In my situation, there were so many intriguing aspects to who he was and what it would be like to be together, I couldn’t help wanting to explore them. But all of my assumptions were based on what I thought I knew, not on reality.
I found myself trapped, hiding from the harsh reality that I’d lost myself by pretending to be what he wanted. It’s awful when your relationship doesn’t feel right but, instead of trusting your instincts, you decide there’s something wrong with you and it would be easier to blame yourself: Everything is fine. He’s fine. I’m fine. He’s right. I’m wrong. I made a mistake. It’s my fault.
The pain wasn’t obvious to me at first. I was completely caught up in him, in us, in the honeymoon-phase bliss. I was focused on making sure that I was perfect for him, that I was happy all the time, that I never gave him any reason to leave. But the more I silenced my voice with this guy, the more isolated I became. I didn’t recognize myself drifting further and further away from my friends. They tried so many times to open my eyes to what was happening and to help me, but I couldn’t hear them.I didn’t want to believe that I was being tricked into thinking my boyfriend was someone he wasn’t.
Our love story progressed at lightning speed, with neither of us playing coy about how we felt. The beginning was filled with anticipation and excited butterflies. For a while it was fun keeping things private, just between us. We texted and called each other constantly. We seemed much like any other young couple madly in love.
The arguments started a couple months later. I began to see a very different side of him: curtness, a belittling tone, verbal reprimands. We worked through these issues daily, and he would send me letters expressing intense and all-consuming love to make up for his behavior. He once wrote that he didn’t know what he’d do without me and that it scared him. What the hell is a girl supposed to do when she reads that? Of course there was a sense of security knowing that I was the one he needed, that there was something about me that made him feel safe and loved. But immense uneasiness also came with it. I felt hypocritical because, on one hand, I did want all this attention from him. Yet when he came on so strong, I felt scared and claustrophobic and out of control. Still, I loved him and couldn’t see myself without him, so I ignored the red flags and passed them off as things that would fix themselves.
Things continued to escalate and I no longer felt the “safety”that had helped me justify putting up with his abuse. His old habits trumped any security his love letters provided and he was back to telling me what I could and couldn’t do, should and shouldn’t wear—everything I did was “inappropriate,” a word that still haunts me to this day. He yelled at me, calling me horrible things like dumb, blind, stupid, selfish, and a whore. I was made to feel unworthy, less than, and, frankly, like a piece of shit. He told me to “suck cock” one night on the phone and then he hung up after saying there was no point even talking to me.
He silenced any voice I thought I had, both inwardly and outwardly. My opinions were disregarded, my feelings dismissed, and my body weakened. I had panic attacks where my heart beat out of my chest as I sobbed and hyperventilated on the floor. I was so stressed that I developed rashes and acne. I found myself second-guessing every thought I had and every choice I made. Whenever I spent time with him, I was basically hidden away in his house with the blinds drawn. Even though my close friends and family knew we were together, it still felt like we were meant to be kept a secret. Long gone were the days of that harmless fun, that sacred intimacy. It wasn’t exciting to sneak around, living in constant anxiety of being “discovered.” I wasn’t looking for a public declaration of love. Simple hand-holding would have sufficed.
I had completely isolated myself, made my world so small. He became my world and made me feel like my only place was with him. He discouraged me from seeing certain people, mostly other guys I’d been friends with for years. Any social life that didn’t involve him or his friends was unacceptable. Even my relationship with my own mom, which means the world to me, was challenged. I became a one-woman island, but not the strong and independent kind. I was the definition of codependent. And worst of all: I became so scared that if I left him, I would have nothing. Be nothing.
I’ll never forget the moment when the verbal threats escalated and signs of physical violence started to show. His temper had flared up and he was being very verbally aggressive again, and in the middle of an argument his hand reached out and closed around my neck. Part of me feels strange even calling it choking because I can’t imagine this person doing such a thing, yet it still felt extremely threatening. It shocked me to the core and was what made me finally take notice. People close to me had already voiced their concerns about his demeanor; they felt we were illsuited for each other. But their concerns had been based solely on what they’d seen on the surface, never on what was happening behind closed doors that only the two of us knew. The whole incident left me scared and confused. I wanted to reach out for help from those who had already spoken up, but didn’t want to expose what had really been going on or get him in trouble. I also didn’t want them to think less of me for being in this situation.
My mom was the one who finally encouraged me to speak with a very dear friend who had been in this same kind of relationship years before. We sat for a couple of hours and talked about our shared experiences, and at the end he looked at me so powerfully and said: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” With that simple statement—originally coined by Maya Angelou—it all clicked.
My boyfriend was a yeller, a name-caller, a belittler, a loose cannon. He had consistently shown me who he was, and I was still trying to convince myself that I could change him. I thought I could make him less angry, less demanding, less abusive by being a better girlfriend. But that wasn’t going to change anything. Sure, maybe it would get easier for a day, a week, even a month. But ultimately if he was capable of making me feel less than, making me doubt myself, my heart, my gut, and my intellect—then he wasn’t the person I should be with.
Not long after this discussion, I broke things off and we didn’t speak for a while. However—and I know many of you will be in absolute shock when I say this—he convinced me, after we spent that time apart, that we should talk it all through face-to-face. We did just that and, during our discussion, we discovered we’d both done our own self-reflection to better understand how to move forward. So we decided to try again. I planned to speak up more, and he’d be more attentive and understanding.
I was excited to apply these new promises and felt mature knowing we’d been so open and honest with each other about how to move forward. This was a step in the right direction. Or so I thought.
Things seemed to hold firm because we were all lovey-dovey again. He constantly told me how much he loved me, banishing any doubt that I was worthy of his affection, and he stressed how no one would ever love me like he did. I felt important and irreplaceable. Yes, there were hiccups here and there, but sometimes it was as if the earlier months had melted away and he was a different person altogether. Those moments of hope, of a brighter future ahead, were what kept me motivated to keep trying.
But despite our best efforts, eventually old habits reared their ugly heads and things went back to the way they used to be. There came a point when being wooed with gifts and words of affirmation and love wasn’t enough. Nothing he said or did felt genuine anymore, and I started to see his threats as empty.
finally