Predicting who I will be next.
As simple as that is, it’s painfully true. I’ve written before about how I struggle with finding my true self. I’m starting to believe that I’ve never even truly met her.
Growth and change are natural progressions in life. I used to disagree with that completely. I hated change. To be honest, the concept of it still unnerves me from time to time. I used to think that if I changed in any way that I was putting on an act or trying to hide something about myself. People only change if they’re guilty of something, right? We all decided a long time ago who we were gonna be, what types of things would spark our interest, what morals we would die for.
Now, I don’t even think I’m the same person that I was 24 hours ago.
I look at the world completely differently than that naive little girl who was too afraid to show the world an ounce of who she was. If I don’t grow as a person, then what the hell am I doing? Living the same exact life day after day, with no changes in my opinions or feelings? I’ll leave that to the people who refuse to ever venture away from their hometowns – working the same job year after year and blacking out at the same disgusting bar and grill after their parents left and called it a night.
Seriously, I am allowing any of you readers to murder me before I get trapped in that never-ending hole. To all my region people, bury me behind The Bullpen.
So, yes, it is great that I have come to the realization that change is good. Change is healthy. However, I’m starting to worry about how easily I practice it. I welcome change with open arms and never look back. But, what if I’m starting to completely lose myself in it?
I catch myself altering my opinions or thoughts based on the people around me. Nothing drastic or life-altering, but simple things such as lying about disliking a scene from a movie even though I had admired it in the safety of my own mind. Or agreeing to a wild and chaotic night out when I’d prefer to stay in and rewatch Survivor season 8 for the millionth time.
You know, the one where Boston Rob and Amber meet before they got married and had four kids? Ah, the peace of mind that comes with living vicariously through a reality tv couple.
I don’t have an explanation as to why I do this. Why I feel the need to nod my head and agree even when I’m having a full-blown unspoken morality debate with myself internally. I do think it’s important to be an agreeable person, but there are limits. I know my limits, but even I can’t help myself sometimes. I want to stand out, but I don’t want to make others feel second-hand embarrassment for me or take away the spotlight from someone else. I want to relax and be chill, but I don’t want people to think I’m boring and not worth their attention. I want to be everywhere but nowhere. I want to be everyone but no one. But desperately, I want to make sure the people I care about like me, or at least like who I am at that time. How fucking exhausting was that to read? Because I’m ready to pass out from this completely unnecessary stress.
I know, I know, the question as old as time: “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?” Honestly, what a crazy question. Fuck yeah, I would. Could you imagine the f.o.m.o I’d experience?
This isn’t to say that everything I say or do is a lie. I just stretch the truth or mindlessly agree because it’s just easier. Let’s not make that a whole big thing – we all do it. Maybe not as much as I do, but I know you’ve been guilty of this from time to time, and that’s okay. Let’s work on normalizing being human because that’s what this is. It’s the capacity that I need to work on.
I’ll name some things that I do really like that other people may not. I absolutely adore all of the Adam Sandler movies from the late 90s/early 2000s. Gasp! I know! They’re cheesy, dumb, and remind me of the silly part of my humor that I get from my dad. I don’t really care for pizza, but I could live happily with only eating pizza rolls the rest of my life. To this day, I’d still choose to read a Nicholas Sparks book over a classic, critically acclaimed novel any day, but real-life cheesy romance? You’d never catch me dead enjoying that shit. My friends are shocked if I even give them a hug, but I’ll sit in my room bawling my eyes out over fictional love any night.
I contradict myself all the time. It’s impossible to keep up. I try to guess who I will be next week, and I am 100% guaranteed to give the wrong answer.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I created these ridiculous “friendship” quizzes that we found on a dingy website that surely has already tracked every single thing on my phone and knows all about me. Do you think that robot knows me better than I know myself? Anyway, one of my questions was a simple one everyone chooses, again losing my originality day by day – “What is Erin’s favorite color?” I chose baby blue. I have always had a strange connection to the color. Nothing deep about it, just something I strongly attached to my personality to. However, I also put yellow in the list of options. Most people chose yellow. My entire room is decorated yellow – my blankets, pillows, flowers, bathroom curtain, bathroom towels, you get it. Anyone that has stepped foot into my apartment can tell that I am a fan of the color yellow. When one of my friends took the quiz and got that one wrong, he texted me saying “I think you answered that one wrong yourself”.
Now, I’m not reading too deeply into that. His text was funny and that’s all it was meant to be. But it got me thinking, who the hell am I? If I can’t even be right about something as basic as MY OWN favorite color, am I right about any of it?
I’m so focused on caring about other people and their opinions that I am getting my own personality all wrong. Is this growth, or am I being a fraud? I’ll start studying and report back on how my grades are going with this, even though I’ll probably end up cheating anyway.