Do we ever take time to appreciate life as it is, without reaching in, and altering anything?
As a child,I was very introverted. I spoke to people but they were always ones within my never-changing social circle, one that I still to this day preserve. And so, I spent a lot of time with myself contemplating the universe.
Especially the night sky, which was always accessible to me no matter where I was. I took a minimum of five minutes every day after sunset, just to stare at the night sky, and would come back later at night when the stars grew more visible, and the atmosphere more serene.
It fascinated me how the only constant in my life, with no variants whatsoever, were the alignments of the stars. Now that I think of it, I came back every night to check if they were still there, if they were still the same. It gave me a sense of security.
It was never important for me to be socially active, of course, since i was only a child. So i sat in my room and watched movies, letting them dictate how my personality should form, and developing a line of thought that my personality is solely based on my surroundings, not on me.
Of course, I grew to be a very anxious child.
I was on my own too much, that I started to contemplate things that an 11 year old is not supposed to think about. Things as major as the existence of God to as minor as my personas and how I perceive myself. My mom once asked me “if you think about things like this right now, then what about when you grow older? and when you have adult responsibilities?”
And that was the scariest thing for me, growing old and acquiring responsibilities of my own.
But then came my teen years, and I knew that this was what I was supposed to be scared of and not adulthood. I doubted myself before my teen years, but this was on a whole other level. a level that was self-depreciation and hatred, a level that demanded normalcy and rejected all differences. a level that might’ve blurred the meaning of normalcy forever.
I thought self-hatred and humbleness were equal. I lowered my self esteem and killed that 11 year old stargazer inside me because for some reason, it was important to be a normal teenager, whatever that meant. I thought confidence was a luxury that I will never afford and continued living in the shades, being terrified of people as a whole and keeping my distance from them. Keeping my hand down even when i knew answers to questions.
Staying invisible was the most important rule at the time.
But suddenly I was obligated to be visible in society, suddenly I had to have a personality of my own, that wasn’t derived from a movie or from a friend. I had to be my own person, all while not even knowing what people were actually like.
I forced myself into society with the strongest cruelest force there is, and the aftermath was always depressive episodes that lasted for weeks. Ihated myself for not being able to be “normal”.
Why couldn’t i just converse? normally?
I found myself picking up conversational strategies from people around me like some sort of alienated, socially inept freak. And what hurt the most was realizing that I actually might be one.
through the window goes every hope to ever be a normal teenager.
Now approaching 17 years of living, I have grown an acceptance of some sort that I might never be normal, at least not the way normal is perceived. sure, I might still be avoiding social events ,I might still be aching for the feeling that many people appreciate my company. But I’ll learn someday, most likely the hard way, that i may ache for it, but i do not need to be loved.