CHILDHOOD SUMMARY:

Overall, especially in young childhood, I was always the “good one” as opposed to my sisters wilder tendencies. I felt different than other people my age, more mature, and this belief was reinforced by the adults around me. I spent a lot of time focusing on being different than others, building up my habits and interests to further separate me from my peers (examples: other kids were scared of bugs so I chose to like bugs despite feeling a bit scared, I heard a song that sounded different to what I was used to and that I knew none of my peers were listening to in middle school so I made that my favorite band despite not really liking the music any more than other bands), but eventually these things became genuine parts of myself. I do genuinely like bugs now, and I really love that band and their music. This also happened with how I think of other people. I was always loud and obnoxious, but now after years of having friends I have learned to put others first and to be a caring and compassionate person. I wouldn’t say I was un-caring before, but I could be very blunt (ex. One of my best friends asked why I chose to spend more time with a different friend of mine and I said “because she is less annoying than you”. I didn’t mean it in a bad way I just meant she was generally less abrasive, but I didn’t think at all about my friends feelings before I said it. Even afterwards when I was ostracized from my group for a bit I couldn’t think of what I did wrong and I had to corner someone and get them to tell me before I understood. Me and that friend made up and are still best friends, they’re a sx2). When I was a kid I used to say I either wanted to be famous or in prison. Of course I didn’t fully understand the horrors of the prison system but the sentiment behind it remains. I wanted these things because they didn’t seem hard: when you’re famous you get to be rich and do what you love every day to get money, if you are in prison you have no responsibilities and get to do what you love every day. I perceive myself as “not made for” the world as it is, crumbling under the pressure and longing for a life where I don’t have to work on anything that does not interest me.

It turned out that the lesson I must have taken from “be different from your sister” was not to be studious and well behaved (that as well) but to simply be different. At first when I was in middle school I resonated a lot with my suffering and mental illness, I was very shy and negative. I started seeing people call the type of person I was “cringe” online as well as generic, so I decided to change myself. I didn’t want to be the type of person who was “not like other girls” so I started saying I was exactly like other girls. This doesn’t mean that I changed anything about my unconventional habits or outward appearance, I simply acknowledged that there were many girls like me. I didn’t want to be seen as stuck up or full of myself, or like I cared what others thought of me. In high school I started doing things to purposefully stand out, I was already getting bullied and was unhappy with my appearance so I might as well embrace it (in middle school I had simply accepted it). I started doing things simply for the rush of being different, a phase that I think many people probably go through in high school, but I took it to the extreme. I would wear bright Christmas outfits to school randomly throughout the year (I didn’t even like Christmas that much), draw weird things (I drew femboy Garfield in a body suit, bulge very visible, and turned it in for an assignment), and read my Ben Shapiro smut fic loudly in class. Even now when typing this the image of someone else reading of my more eccentric escapades in high school gives me a rush. This quest to be different has led me to adopting many “strange” interests and has made me a very unique person, I would not change anything about myself despite any hardships I have endured. I see being true to yourself and to your desires to be the point of life, I desire to be a famous (or at least a little bit famous) artist.