When I was 13 years old, I took a picture with my classmates.

This was during the time when we had to wait for photographs to be processed before seeing the actual image days or even weeks later. I remember the day the photos were brought to school. We paid only Kshs. 20 to get a copy.

My friend and classmate, Edna, grabbed hers and immediately dashed to her brother’s class to show him the picture. I followed her.

When we got to the door, we found one of her brother’s classmates standing there. She asked to see the photo, and Edna happily handed it over.

“Aww, Edna, you look so pretty,” she said.

Edna smiled and responded with a childlike, “Thank you.”

Then the girl looked at the photo again.

“Eh, but who is this girl?” she asked, laughing mockingly. “She looks like she’s pregnant.”

She burst out laughing even louder, not knowing that I was that girl.

There I was in the photo, standing awkwardly with my hand behind my back, pushing my stomach forward in a way that made it protrude.

My heart broke like glass into smithereens.

At that age, pregnancy was something deeply frowned upon. So, for someone to say that I looked pregnant felt humiliating. I did not know what to do with the shame that washed over me. With tears welling up in my eyes, I quickly ran back to class and tried to continue with whatever I had been doing before following Edna.

Believe it or not, that one statement changed how I saw myself in photographs.

It was said in jest. It was probably not meant to offend. It may have simply been an opinion based on what she saw in that moment. But to me, it became more than a comment.

It became a story.

Despite the many compliments I had received about my cute dimple and beautiful smile, I began avoiding photos. From the age of 13, I carried the narrative that I was not photogenic, that I looked ugly in pictures, and that taking photos was something I simply could not do.

But looking back now, I realise something important.

It was not just what happened that shaped me.

It was the story I told myself about what happened.

And for years, I lived under the weight of that story.

How many times have we done this?

How many times have we taken one careless comment, one embarrassing moment, one rejection, one failure, one laugh, one look, and turned it into a lifelong belief?

“You are not beautiful.”

“You are not smart.”

“You are not confident.”

“You are not good enough.”

“You are not the kind of person who can stand out.”

“You are not worthy of being seen.”

The stories we tell ourselves matter because, over time, they become the lens through which we see ourselves. And once a story settles in our hearts, we begin to make decisions from it. We hide. We shrink. We avoid opportunities. We reject compliments. We disqualify ourselves before anyone else does.

That is why self-awareness is so important, especially for teenagers.

A young person may not always have the maturity to separate an incident from their identity. A comment about their body can become a belief about their worth. A poor grade can become a belief about their intelligence. A rejection can become a belief that they do not belong.

And if those stories are never challenged, they can follow them quietly into adulthood.

So perhaps the real work is not just to ask, “What happened to me?”

It is to ask, “What did I start believing about myself because of what happened?”

Because sometimes, freedom begins when we finally realise that the story we have been living by was never the truth.

It was only a moment.

And we are allowed to tell a new story.