be your badass self
Originally published on Rebelle Society on August 12th, 2013
How much of our existence comes from a place of “I hope everyone likes this,” or “I hope this doesn’t offend anyone?”
If we pay attention, most likely a lot, as hard as it is to admit.
But it’s a bum deal because if everyone likes us then we are probably neutral and boring. There is no way everyone is going to like us so why should everyone need to like us?
We all want to feel comfortable being ourselves and finally be seen by the world as who we are and still be loved. How does that happen if we don’t put out who we really are?
I wonder how much time we spend figuring out how to not stand out? Comparing our lives to the people’s next to us, making sure there’s not too much discrepancy. Looking around for inspiration is one thing, but looking for answers is an investment of time that never pays off.
The only answers we will find from someone else are the ones that worked for them. And since we’re not them, well, how the fuck are their answers supposed to work for us? You see how the math doesn’t work out here right?
If we are fearful in the first steps of unveiling our inner freak, the one that screams aloud in funny voices in front of the mirror, and we let that fear shut us down, then we quietly remain the world’s best-kept secrets.
Which is fine, because we’ll be telling ourselves that we’re waiting for our ‘right’ time, but that is bullshit because what we’re really waiting for is someone else. We’ll hope that someone comes around and forces us to be the people we are afraid to unleash, and that’s bad news.
Then we become that person’s emotional bitch. They’ll give us some good material for a while. During the high times we’ll be certain that we’ve got it all figured out and that “love cures all.” Which might be true, only we don’t know what the fuck we’re talking about because it’s not actually love that we’re experiencing.
What we’re experiencing is just the buzz of intoxication. Love only comes after we’ve drunk the well dry, puked our brains out, and gotten sober again.
But during the low times, oh man, we’ll start to get packed full of resentment and hostility because that person didn’t save us. See we wanted their actions to bring out the best in us. And every time they did something that didn’t make us the person we wanted to be, well, then they fucked up.
Thing is, if they had any indication of our well-disguised emotional instability then they would have kicked our shit to the curb from the beginning (unless they were nutty as well). And maybe we know this, we know that we were all messed up inside.
And maybe that’s why we put up a front, not just for someone we love, but with everyone we know. We’re afraid that when they see the ugly reality of our bloated faces after burritos, or the green shit in between our teeth, or the music we actually listen to when no one is around then they’ll not want us. And what a shitty feeling that is. So instead of risking it, we fake it. And the people we attract are other crazy fuckers that are faking it just as hard.
When it comes to attracting another crazy fucker, that relationship is a hell of a time. There’s a lot to be said about elevating our performance to match our competition, especially when we’re performing insane behavior and our competition is also doubling as our partner.
With the right mix of delusions, jealousy, abuse, and paranoia we can be sure to eliminate any potential for a loving and nurturing connection. Relationships like this should be avoided at all cost.
Or should they?
It’s likely that we need to go through these extremes in our attempt to find balance (by the way, what the fuck is balance)? The right amount of shit will either produce something of quality or it will just stay shit. Hopefully, for our sake, it will produce something high quality.
We expose ourselves to different situations to find out who we are. Generally, the more intense the experience is the more potent the lesson will be. For most of us, it only takes 1 (sometimes 10) unhealthy relationship to determine that we want a little more, something like love maybe.
This happens in conjunction with our own self-discovery, when we start realizing that we are good. And we start realizing this when we loosen the reigns on our own insecurity and start embracing our individuality.
If I think of all the times I’ve looked over my shoulder and saw the guy with the Marines sticker on his truck singing along to a Taylor Swift song I’ve felt genuine moments of envy. Like, how did he have the confidence not to care what I might be thinking of him? I wasn’t thinking he was stupid, I was thinking he was awesome. Which then made me think he was stupid because I was mad that I wasn’t him.
But in that moment I learned something; if I liked someone that had the confidence to be his goofy ass self in front of a stranger then I needed to be someone that could be myself in front of a stranger as well. I stopped turning my music down and rolling up my windows at red lights after that moment. I love John Mayer.
We have a certain level of interest and tolerance for new experiences and if we put ourselves in new situations and pay attention to our wise little instincts — which we usually ignore in order to emulsify our hearts in the blender of life — then we will have a pretty good idea about what is going on around (and inside) us. Things like who we are and what the hell we’re supposed to be doing with our lives, if we’re in the right place, how to communicate, who to date, and the difference between a loving relationship and a co-dependency.
We’ll also get pretty clear indications early on if the people we are surrounding ourselves with are interested in who we really are or just in who they want us to be. The people that want us to be anything other than who we are, shouldn’t even be a part of our equation. The other people, the ones that accept us — well, we deserve them because most people don’t have the courage to hold out for what they’re worth.
Think about it, would you rather be alone with your bad self or surrounded by a bunch of people that don’t let you be that person anyway?
