Fake It Until You Make It
I can remember being in middle school, sitting in the passenger seat, waiting until the last possible second to make my way out of the car and into the school. Anxiety stressed within my stomach, and my heart raced as I even thought about having to walk into yet another school as a new student.
Fake it until you make it was a piece of advice my mom liked to remind me of when I faced these situations, and this one was no exception. She had told me to think about the person I’d want to be and pretend that I was her for the day, and everything would work for me after that.
Except, I couldn’t.
We had moved to a fairly small town, and on paper, it wasn’t necessarily a place I felt I would ever fit into. Cookie-cutter houses and people, hateful rhetoric disguised as jokes, and small-town fame ran everything in it. I knew as soon as I got there that it wasn’t the place for me, and I knew there was no fakeness within me to pretend that it was.
The Cost of Belonging
Eventually, I found people I thought were mine. I had a group of people that I would hang out with, but over time, it was still evident that something was just missing.
I knew it’d be easy to get closer to them; I could go to church every Sunday, attend Bible study on Wednesdays, and go to Fellowship of Christian Athletes during my lunch periods instead of the cafeteria. It would’ve been easy to cut away pieces that were true to myself just to make more space for others to feel more comfortable. I could’ve been quiet and small for the sake of friendship, altered what I truly felt and thought just for some company.
But that doesn’t sound all that enticing, does it? Even just thinking about doing it now feels crazy.
It’s crazy that I thought about it for a second, even if I didn’t do it. It’s crazy that the idea was even the littlest bit enticing, and it’s crazier that somehow I still eventually ended up giving in to it.
When I Lost Myself
When I came to Texas State, I was proud of myself for staying true to who I was, especially when it was extremely difficult to do so. I was happy that a high school version of me figured out something I really had yet to realize in its entirety.
However, while recently reflecting over what has happened since then, I came to the horrific realization that I wasn’t as above it as I might have initially thought.
I had realized a strange number of things about myself in the last few months, and considering I’ve been going through a little breakup, it was bound to be. Some are simple enough, like how I love calm nights that seamlessly fade into slow mornings. Some were a little more difficult to come to terms with, like how I somehow, along the way, lost who I really was, and I was so deep into it that I didn’t even think twice about it. Individuality was the price I paid for this connection, and it only left me with my pockets empty. Maybe me, as well.
During the aftermath, as I was trying to pick up the pieces the relationship had broken into, I figured it out. It was so strangely clear to me, looking back at who I was during it and realizing that none of it was really and truly me. Suddenly, I went from being someone whose resistance made me proud to nothing more than an artificial version of myself. The worst part?
I knew it along the way, but it’s easier and far more comforting to lie than to feel what that truth might entail. I would make excuses for myself and my actions, convince myself that I had any control at all over the situation. I wasted months pretending I was this woman that I wanted to be so badly; strong-willed, in control, and completely unbothered by a man’s mistakes.
Truth be told, I just wasn’t. And I hadn’t been for a long time, even before that. I could never say no to this person, not at any stage we were at. Even after he had hurt me beyond repair the first time and a few other times after that. But at the end of the day, I don’t know if I ever hated him, or if I just hated the version of myself I was uncontrollably becoming.
I used to be a fairly dramatic little girl, and I vividly remember listening to breakup songs where the woman sang sad lyrics for the one she once loved. I can also remember my immediate distaste when hearing this idea, how I was so prideful and so sure that that would never be me.
Until suddenly it was.
I was the girl crying in my bed, or in class, or to him. Which then turned into me crying about how badly it bothered me in the first place. It was a cycle of feeling an emotion, being angry that I felt it, and trying to smother it down anyway I could, without truly processing any of it. Not my proudest moments, I am aware, but it was human, and it was me. And I would’ve had a much better time if I had just given myself some grace.
It took me a long time to learn, and it remains something I’m grateful to keep trying to understand. I had to realize that it truly was a big, dramatic loss for me, and to run away from it is to run away from all the other dramatic ways in which I feel.
What I’m Learning Now
That’s not the message my mom was trying to give me, and I can see that now. She didn’t want me to make myself smaller or to change who I really was. She wanted me to have confidence, to realize that there isn’t anything that I can’t do, and I understand the point of the statement comes from ‘faking it’ until it becomes natural. I’ve also been able to understand that it will never feel natural to me, yet every day I learn a different thing about me that is. I’ve stopped trying to run away from feelings that scare me to accept, instead, I hold them endearingly. It doesn’t mean I have to constantly talk about it or give in to them. They’re just as important as all the other beautiful ways in which I feel, and constantly faking it won’t make a version of myself that I enjoy.