This story is part of our Aughts Effect package, which celebrates 20 years of Popsugar — and enduring culture. Read all the stories here.

The summer after my senior year of high school in 2005, I took my first real selfie. I had just gotten my college email address, which meant I could officially sign up for Facebook to connect with the other incoming students in my department — but I needed a profile picture. So I did full glam makeup, curled my hair, and took my digital camera to the bathroom with good, bright lighting to take a really good selfie.

I probably took hundreds of photos of myself over the course of an hour or two, deleting outtakes and touching up lip gloss along the way, before I had a handful that I liked enough to upload to my computer — until I selected “the one” for my profile pic. Looking back, it’s easy to frame this as my movie montage moment, but the reality was that I was an insecure 19-year-old who hated almost every picture. I worried about fitting in with other incoming students, and obviously hoped the picture would make all the boys fall in love with me. A lot of pressure for only a few megapixels.

But it was an early lesson in selfie posing — chin out and down, head tilted, hold the angle until the shutter clicks — a muscle I’d continue to hone through college and into adulthood, as technology grew up alongside my fellow millennials. To anchor you in selfie time, this is somewhere between MacBook Photo Booth and Instagram’s Valencia filter.

Truth is, I quickly began to love seeing myself through my own lens. Taking my own photos felt safe — I could create and control what made it out into the world. Someone else taking my picture? Unpredictable and scary. I distinctly remember having a total meltdown over pictures a friend posted from a post-graduation beach trip. I was thrashing around in the ocean on an inflatable shark, drinking, clearly having a fun time — but all I could see were the unflattering angles and double chins. I immediately untagged myself from every photo. Thankfully they still exist, because what I see now is photo evidence of my last Gulf Coast beach trip before leaving home for good. Of a rainbow zebra-print bikini that I bought last minute at Target.

My knee-jerk reaction to delete what I don’t like (instead of sitting with an uncomfortable feeling) is probably why evidence of my first Facebook selfie no longer exists. At some point in my 20s, that photo stopped matching my self-narrative and I got rid of it. Never once thinking about the future me that might want to see it.

Then Instagram came on the scene and I finally signed up for the new app in 2012, two years after launching. It gave free rein to post whatever mundane thing was happening at the time, slap a filter on it, and call it a day. And I filtered the hell out of my photos, but was less filtered about what I posted. In fact, my very first Instagram post was a filtered photo of some graffiti on a dumpster behind the art gallery I worked for. It’s funny now to think that my first Facebook photo was a glammed-up selfie while my first ‘gram was literal garbage. It was a few years of blissful boomerangs and puppy filters before feeds changed, algorithms developed, and I moved to LA — and suddenly there was a lot more riding on it all.

By 2015, I’d fallen prey to the need to grind out content like a Girlboss. Selfies had to look effortless, like I’d just happened to catch myself looking flawless on my way out the door. And this time, I wasn’t just seeking validation from my circle of friends but from what felt like the entire world. It was an entirely self-imposed pressure to become some kind of respected creator, quit my job, and turn it into a career. It was performative on so many levels. In retrospect, it’s a hard period to look back on because what made it out onto the feed was such a sharp contrast to what was happening underneath — which was a very real struggle with anxiety and identity. So when Instagram Stories came out, it felt like there was more of myself I had to curate, and I just couldn’t keep up. And I just kinda. . . stopped. For a while, my solution was to just hide from my own camera because I didn’t want to deal with it.

Now at 39, I’m posting less and primarily taking selfies for the stories I write (beauty editor life!) or when I’m feeling particularly good. But I’m so thankful that I’m able to document my silly little days if I want to without worrying about how my face will perform. I was able to slowly loosen the grip I put on myself and treat selfies for what they are: myself from my POV.

That doesn’t mean I now magically love every selfie. I still cringe and panic-delete at times; I’m definitely still covering zits before I whip the camera out, and I love it when one gets attention. Twenty years later, I’m still that 19-year-old with a hundred outtakes. I’ve just gotten better at leaving a few in for the memories. It’s proof of a version of myself that’s made me into who I am today.

Hannah Cassidy is a PS contributor.