Ever since I was a kid, I knew that I really didn’t fit in with the kids around me. I tried really hard to, but none of them understood me. I behaved how I thought was normal, but it just didn’t feel like me. I grew up differently than most of the kids where I grew up. I couldn’t just go over to people’s houses or attend sleepovers like other little girls could. My parents didn’t mean any harm, they were just worried about the dangers of the world outside of our home. So maybe there was another child that may have understood me, but I never really had the opportunity to get close to them.
I spent my childhood and adolescence trying to blend in with the hopes that I would really connect with just one person. I just wanted someone who “got it”. What I failed to realize was that you can’t expect someone to connect to the “real you” if you refuse to show it to them. I’ve always had a hard time opening up to people because I was afraid that my differences wouldn’t be accepted or understood. I had to grow up a lot faster than a lot of my peers and I just couldn’t enjoy the same things they could, the way they could. I wanted so desperately to be “normal” because not once did I think that being myself would make me happier.
It wasn’t until I got to college that I realized that there are people even weirder than me (lol). And it’s not that I’m weird, I’m just a creative and the fact that my mind works a little differently is an advantage for me. I now have people who understand me, who get why I am the way I am about certain things. I don’t feel so alone. For most creatives, childhood and adolscence were not kind to us.
I believe that if I had been more open to being myself as a child, I would have been able to connect with people the way that I have now sooner. But you live and you learn, right? Now I can encourage others to be fearlessly authentic and not be afraid of how others will recieve you. You weren’t put in this world to be the same as anyone else.