To fit in with our friends, sometimes it feels like we need to sacrifice parts of ourselves. Whether it is losing your accent within a month of being in the United States to stop people from making fun of you, or repeating your every word in a butchered faux-Jamaican lilt or whether you conceal your weird hobbies so that people believe you to be well-adjusted. There was a stage in my life where I manipulated my personality to a mix of who I thought I should be and who people thought I was. If I was going to be an outcast, I wanted that to be a personal choice. I refused to be a desperate social climber, kissing bottoms and feigning cuteness in order to fit in with people I didn't like.
However, there was a down side to this manipulation of self that I am still recovering from. I am lost, empty and I feel like I am actually becoming the person I was pretending to be. The moment I am certain that my pretense is no longer will be the moment I grow up, the moment my kid-self dies. The essence of my childhood will be dead by the time I no longer think naively about the world, maintaining some hope in its inherent goodness. My innocence will be killed when I can no longer go a full week without a cloud of negativity ruining my seemingly futile pushes towards optimism.
I want to return to a younger version of myself but it is difficult to even remember who I was before I started to become socially acceptable. My guess is I was nicer, more optimistic, had more hours of sleep and spent a lot of time actually being selfless rather than just thinking about it. I was open about my emotions; I didn't feel the need to hide how I felt under the guise of being a strong person. It was easy for me to admit I cared about people. I didn't take things personally and I was secure in my future and in who I was. I was certain of a successful future and ignorant of the human potential for disappointment.
The best kinds of people are the ones who let you be your entire self. Fixing myself is important to me now. I want to become a different person and in order to do this, I want to surround myself by people who are willing to assist me with my search for myself. To all people who are lost, I advise finding friends who will understand the fact that you are lost and will let you find yourself however you need to. Surround yourself with people who can deal with your unbelievable highs and throes of depression. Find people who will accept your weird hobbies and your fetish for collarbones.
One of my biggest regrets is wasting too much time trying to be someone I'm not for people who didn't care. It seems so obvious that you should not compromise yourself for others, but it is a difficult thing to be aware of. Right now, I am thankful for people who let me exist as I am. New friends will occasionally ask, "Why are you friends with X, he/she's such an asshole!" And that is really none of their business. I am friends with assholes, bitches, douche bags, nice guys, nice girls, basically anyone who lets me live my life the way I live it without trying to change me or without abandoning me. This is so difficult for some people to grasp, yet I feel it should be intuitive. To me, it doesn't matter what others think of my friends because they don't get it. The first people to make you feel guilty about the ones you associate with are the first to abandon you when things get difficult and when you slip up from your image of perfection. I'm done trying to find flaws in people who support me. Why should I focus on their flaws when they clearly ignore mine?
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