Incompetent, unworthy, useless. Words I was thought to be true. In an unselfish way, I guess I have always known that I might be just a little bit vain or egotistical. I held my self to high regards. I had to be the symbol of perfection. Yea…yea. I’ve heard it all. “You are perfect just the way you are” and which way is that? “You are imperfectly perfect”. You know that’s a contradiction right? Judged and beaten and broken. By whose eyes I was watching me is a question I have many answers to. I watched me through the lenses of my siblings, parents, friends and strangers. None of their lenses were clean. Clouded by a predisposed genetical way of thinking called I-see- your-faults-before-I-see mine and also sometimes called I-know-you-better-than-you. I guess my own mind is my enemy. Of my demise I may blame everyone around me, but at the end of the day I am left alone with my mind, soul and heart at war.
I thought I knew something for sure. That in our fire ages, we are incompetent morons. We act and pretend like we know everything. We say the older generation doesn’t understand us. We try to make up our own principles based of off a badly written movie character and we hold on to it and call it our personality. Our ears are plugged into the latest drama and gossip or we just stay in our rooms disconnected from the world. We try so hard to have a distinct sense of who we are so we try everything and everyone. I read somewhere that a man’s biggest fear is being forgotten. I saw the truth in that as I tried to be remembered.
Now, I am unsure. I was told contradictions all my life. Be sociable but quite, know that you are beautiful but never say you are, be confident but shy, be a well-rounded person but never be a know-it-all. It’s hard keeping up with all the unsaid rules and until we reach the age of thirteen, we have never heard of these rules and suddenly we are expected to know them all. We aren’t even given time to figure them out on our own. And in this confused state of mind we are expected to be competent geniuses. So when our childhood is taken away from us and we are shoved into an age where we don’t know what we are, our only choice is pretending like we have it all figured out. From the little that I think that I know, the secret to life is knowing when to stop pretending.
As I am going into the ripe age of twenty one-an age where I don’t know whether I am a child or an adult- I have finally figured out that I give people to much credit. I have always been a people pleaser, working daily for the approval of people. I used to worry about what people thought of every little thing I do. Then it hit me. Everyone is as confused as I am. No one and I mean no one has life all figured out. Everyone is on a spectrum of life ranging from-I don’t know who I am or what I am and I’m just going with it- to-I am growing and I have experiences that can teach other people. I guess now I live to learn and grow instead of pretending like I have it all figured out. I am not scared of making mistakes. I am learning to be a better listener because a foolish man learns from his own mistake but a wise man learns from others mistakes. Finally, I have come to the conclusion that I know nothing and I guess that’s something.