“You get all this advice, but you never actually change. It never sticks.”
This was said to me recently—and honestly? They weren’t wrong.
I have always been stubborn—wildly, aggressively, almost comically stubborn. I don’t take direction well. I treat suggestions like challenges. If someone tells me I should do something, my first instinct is to do the opposite just to prove I can. It’s not even intentional half the time—I just hate the idea that someone else might know what’s best for me better than I do.
And when it comes to love? Forget it. I have never had a problem being difficult. I have never been the girl who bends to make things work. If someone wants to play games, I’ll match them. If they want to be chaotic, I’ll double down. I have met every bad decision with an even worse one. And I never questioned it because I thought that was just who I was—loud, reckless, impossible.
For years, I held onto this belief that you can’t fix people. That no amount of love or patience or good intentions could change someone who wasn’t willing to change. And honestly? I still think that’s true. You can’t fix people. You can’t love someone into being better. You can’t mold someone into the version of themselves that you wish they were. You can’t force someone to take advice, even when it’s the best thing for them.
Believe me, I’ve tried.
I have given some spectacular advice in my life—life-altering, forehead-smacking, “how did I not think of that?” kind of wisdom. And then I watched, in real-time, as the person I gave it to nodded, said “Yeah, you’re totally right,” and then went out and did the exact opposite. It used to drive me insane. I wanted to shake people and say, “Why are you making this harder on yourself? Why can’t you just take the advice?”
But here’s the thing—I do the exact same thing.
I have been told so many times to stop picking fights just to see if someone will stay. To stop testing people to prove they won’t leave. To stop treating love like a game and people like opponents. And every time, I heard it, understood it and then continued doing whatever self-destructive thing felt right in the moment.
Because the truth is, you can’t force people to change. You can give them all the right words, all the wisdom, all the advice that should, in theory, help them grow. But if they aren’t ready, it won’t mean anything. People don’t change because you tell them to. They change because something clicks inside them. Because they finally want to.
And that scared me. It still does. Because for a long time, I convinced myself that if love was real, it wouldn’t require change. That if someone truly loved me, they would take me exactly as I was—sharp edges, impulsive decisions, self-sabotage and all. That love should never ask for growth.
But then, I lost Blue. And it wasn’t the big, dramatic explosion I always imagined. No screaming in the rain, no slamming doors. Just a slow, inevitable unraveling—one I could have stopped if I had been a little softer, a little steadier, a little more willing to admit that maybe, just maybe, I didn’t have everything figured out.
And then, somehow, I have him back in my life.
I don’t know how I pulled that off. Maybe God granted me some grace. Maybe I finally did something right. But I do know one thing: I am not going to lose him again.
Because now, for the first time in my life, I want to change. Not because he’s asked me to, not because I think I need to become someone else entirely, but because I saw myself through his eyes and I realized I could be better. I don’t have to be this version of me forever—the one who runs first, who picks fights out of habit, who treats love like a game just to see if I can win.
And that’s the thing: I don’t think real love demands change. I think real love makes you want to grow. Not because you’re not enough as you are, but because it reminds you that you are capable of becoming more.
But here’s what I’ve also realized—it wouldn’t have mattered how many people told me this before now. It wouldn’t have mattered how many heart-to-hearts I had, how many times I was told, “You don’t have to do this, you don’t have to be this way, you don’t have to make things harder for yourself.” I had to want it. I had to get to this place on my own.
You can’t force someone to take advice. You can’t rush their growth. You can’t drag them through it and expect it to stick. Because change doesn’t work like that. It has to come from inside them, in their own time, on their own terms.
Even my coworkers—who aren’t that much older but have been in the business long enough to feel like my older sisters—understand change better than most. Emerald, the one with a sharp mind and a sharper pen, who writes with the kind of confidence that makes you believe every word, and Red, who edits like she’s composing a film, slicing through scripts with precision and knowing exactly where to cut to make a story hit harder, don’t lecture me about growth. They don’t have to.
They work in an industry where everything shifts by the second—stories evolve, scripts get scrapped, breaking news resets the rundown. They know better than anyone that nothing, nothing, stays the same for long. Maybe that’s why they don’t waste time predicting who I’ll become or if I’ll ever really change. They know I will. Not because someone told me to, not because I planned for it, but because that’s just how the story goes. The first draft is never the final one.
I used to think changing for someone was the worst thing you could do. That it meant weakness. That meant I wasn’t staying true to myself. But the truth is, refusing to change just to prove a point isn’t strength—it’s fear. And I am so tired of being afraid.
So maybe I am changing. Maybe, for the first time, the advice is sticking. Maybe, for once, I don’t feel the need to be the most stubborn person in the room.
Three months until graduation. Three months to prove to myself that I am not the same person I was. Three months to prove that, actually, I can change.
And this time, I think it might just stick.
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Confessions of a Hot Mess is the personal work of Emily Hess. The opinions expressed in this column, as well as those published in The Nevada Sagebrush, are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Sagebrush or its staff.
