I was told I was not supposed to be who I was. Therefore, I tried to change myself. Like a chameleon, I would change colors and adapt as the people and place demanded, but always lay low, in some corner afraid to be discovered that I was an outsider, an alien to their world. Every day I would work harder to perfect my performance. My entire life was a big act and me, the stage where different versions of me performed their role and left.
Sometimes while thinking who I am, I go back to my childhood. The six-year-old me is not even near to who I am today. She was pure and carefree. I do agree we are shaped by the experiences and circumstances but I sometimes wonder what if I was as raw as I used to be. I never get the answer to who I am but only can measure the vast difference I have had over the years submitting to various expectations laid upon me.
The first major expectation that had a huge impact was to be like a girl. I had never thought about gender norms being brought up in a nuclear family with an elder sister. I was always the younger, stronger, mischievous and very talkative sibling. My mother and sister told me that if I stop talking or moving around, something was wrong with me. I liked copying my father more than mother and it was okay until I started growing up. In my teenage years, I would wear baggy shirts and pants. I had no sense of style and it did not matter but I could not escape the societal expectations reeking from my friends and my home where I felt I was a shame in the name of a girl. I did not know about style, did not wear skirts, had very different interests and I felt like a misfit. I was told many things and it broke me. I sunk in my ocean of tears and when I came back to life again, I was baptized into a different person, a performer who would enact for me. It was scary in the beginning but I got good at deceiving myself. Every day I would have a grand show and then at night the curtains would close to a new day with even bigger and greater performance. But all I was trying to do was be a girl.
Then amidst this, the expectation to be thin popped up. I was told, beautiful girls were thin. I started dieting and every day as the curtains closed at night, I started hating my body. I would remember the words that people used on me. I have been compared to anything and everything large from a living to a non-living being and for a teenager already suffering, it was not easy. Self-hate grew and I became quieter every day, succumbing to the hate and expressing only to the diary I kept.
It took years of understanding and acceptance to forget that and be okay with it. As I grew older, I started accepting that it was okay being a misfit. I do not have to perform and act every day. It is not possible for everyone to like me and it is okay. I do sometimes feel insecure about my body but I have overcome the self-hate I used to have. Also, beauty is very subjective. It does not have a waist size or a definite skin color. I feel beautiful and I know you know you are too. I am certainly very quiet and different now, but I like it. I like being an ambivert, enjoy my time listening to songs and writing, painting and working on self-healing while socializing with a close group of friends I have. I do not have to wear a skirt, like pink, wear makeup to be a girl. I can love black and still be a girl.
One thing that helped me the most during my time of sadness was writing. I wrote about anything and everything. It was like anesthesia to me. It may not heal the wound but it stopped hurting, giving time for the wound to heal by itself. It takes time to heal the wound that cannot be seen. It might even take years but if you are stronger, it eventually will.
I do not know why I wrote this, maybe to anesthetize myself once more. I do not know who needs to hear this but it is okay being a misfit; actually, everyone is in one way or the other and it is OKAY! I have found self-acceptance the most difficult but take time and accept who you are.
The Black Caterpillar 