When I was a kid, I hid my heart under the bed, because my mother said, "If you're not careful, someday someone's going to break it." Take it from me. Under the bed is not a good hiding spot. I know because I've been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself. But that's what we were told. Stand up for yourself. And that's hard to do if you don't know who you are. We were expected to define ourselves at such an early age, and if we didn't do it, others did it for us. Geek. Fatty. Slut. Fag. And at the same time we were being told what we were, we were being asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" I always thought that was an unfair question. It presupposes that we can't be what we already are.
Now, that I am older and more mature, I can do the things I have always wanted to do as well as the things I never knew I wanted to do. I can do without authority; I can do without a plan, but all within reason. I can get a job to earn money, and know not to do it away. I can live on my own with said money, but all I could afford is a dismal apartment. At this point, I am all but disillusioned by what I thought was freedom. Though still with my goals, they know longer seem to fit. What I Iooked forward to, I would rather not see.
Shannon L. Alder once said, “One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.” In today’s society, it is very common to fall into peer pressure and to do exactly what the society expects from you. Fitting into the society is one of the hardest, yet most wanted things an individual does. In order to fit in with the typical society norms, one is willing to hide his true identity. Kenji Yoshino, in the “Preface” and “The New Civil Rights,” introduces a term called “covering” – a way of devaluing one’s aspect’s in order to fit in with the society. Covering is a part of everyday living because it helps an individual avoid being judged and ridiculed. Yoshino discusses how people create a false personality based upon the acceptance of society to cover and protect their true self.
“Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, but define yourself.”– Harvey Fierstein
... Marjorie, I also have tried to cover insecurities using confidence. I have used my very loud voice to make myself seem confident to those around me. It didn’t really work; everyone just thought I was loud.
Thinking back now, I can see we were just at that age when we knew a few things about ourselves – about how we were, how we were different from our guardians, from the people outside – but hadn’t yet understood what any of it meant. (36)
In my fifteen years of life, I have been hurt by words countless times, causing me to lose my self-confidence and gain a desire to alter my appearances. My self-confidence started going downhill when I received negative comments about the size of my ears. I became fragile, vulnerable, to insults like these, thus creating challenges for my future. Later in life, I became taunted with names like “ginger” and “fat,” triggering me to long for appearance alterations. I believed that the hurt caused by words would cease to exist once I eliminated the cause and learned how to hide being affected. In hindsight, I realize that I could not have been more wrong. Externally hiding my feel...
Growing up for me some would say it was rather difficult and in some ways I would agree. There have been a lot of rough times that I have been through. This has and will affect my life for the rest of my life. The leading up to adoption, adoption and after adoption are the reasons my life were difficult.
In this lifelong effort, people hide their true selves from others to avoid the rejection we fear most people will have. This concept was very true for me growing up. I was constantly put into a new setting where I was in desperate need of acceptance. The feeling of being an outsider was always on my shoulders and the only way to get rid of it was to try being like the other kids. Throughout my childhood and teenage years I was always moving around with my family.
Throughout the year there have been many ups and downs, mistakes, and accomplishments. Because of these events people can grow as writers and can learn more about the world around them through this media. Over the year I have shown that I have been on both sides of the spectrum of great to unorthodox.
Growing up in a big family I’ve always found it hard to express myself. It always seemed as if others problems were more important than my own, this is what caused me to have an egg-like outlook. When adversity presents itself to me I don’t know what to do with it, so I ignore it and mask my emotions. Masking how I felt always seemed easier for me; it made me tough and bitter on the inside and that’s how I coped. Being able to hide things and not be obvious on the outside soothed me.
Growing up as a “bright” teenager I have habits of making some “smart”choices. I do things like studying for test, being nice to my parents, and getting good grades. Then came one day when I was in eighth grade, I was walking from my friends house to mine, I saw a steel rim with a hard ground lying beneath it. You know teenagers, we’re about as dumb as a bucket of hair. A teenager with something to hang on, sounds scary right.
Who we are? This is the basic question to find out. What we think about ourselves, how we look at ourselves and our relationship to the world? all these things help us to examine ourselves that who we are and what we want to be?
I strongly believe that this needs to change. We need to be slower to judge, and quicker to understand everyone is different. “Fight Song”, By Rachel Platten is my go to. “ And all those things I didn’t say. Wrecking balls inside my brain. I will scream ‘em out tonight. Can you hear my voice this time? This is my fight song. Take back my life song” (Platten 2015). I don’t care who someone is, there will come a time when a person realizes they can’t make everyone happy. There will always be someone trying to knock an individual down. Show them a “Fight Song” (Platten 2015). Prove to them that what they think is irrelevant, and continue being oneself. Be strong, never give up. Whatever one chooses to do, they need to pour their heart and soul into it and own
I never really thought about where my life was going. I always believed life took me where I wanted to go, I never thought that I was the one who took myself were I wanted to go. Once I entered high school I changed the way I thought. This is why I chose to go to college. I believe that college will give me the keys to unlock the doors of life. This way I can choose for myself where I go instead of someone choosing for me.
For at least fifteen years of my life, I kept my emotions bottled up, my secrets under lock and key. Not once did I even question if I could talk about my life to anybody, I couldn’t. Instead of learning to talk about my life, to talk about my feelings, to talk about my troubles and my hardships and my state of being… I learned to be ashamed. I learned wrong.