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Find and Be the Real You
Recognize your masks and be the genuine, authentic, real you beneath them.
Do you show the world your true self?
For most people, I suspect the answer is “sometimes.”
My memories of my childhood are few and far between, for numerous reasons that would digress from my point here. But as a teenager, I began to see how other people did things to be liked, popular, and noticed. As such, I began to put on similar masks.
Before middle school, I was an exceptional student. But I had almost no friends and was something of an outsider in all the communities I participated in. Then, in middle school, that one kid — you know the one, the kid who can circulate through every group and is who everyone desires to be — talked to me. I would go so far as to say he befriended.
Since I didn’t recognize that the loneliness I felt came from within rather than without — something I’d not recognize for about 20+ years — this was amazing to me. Thus, I took what I saw him do — and applied much of it to who I presented to the world.
No, this didn’t make me a popular kid in school in any way, shape, or form. But it did make it far easier — within my geeky existence — to make friends and find social groups to interact with.
