"That's Not You"

As I grew up, my mother liked to say that I was a fun-loving child. She would say that I loved people and I wanted to make everyone smile. As I grew up, that flame dulled and the child that used to bare a smile everywhere she went soon turned into a girl that did not want to go outside out of fear of what everyone else was thinking about her.

When I was in middle school, I learned that my friends were barely friends with me. Since I was friends with just one of the “popular kids,” the rest of them fell in line despite truly caring. It was just one fight with that friend that broke everything down for me, truly showed me what was going on in their heads. Out of anger and spite, I texted in our argument: “You’re just such a bitch!” As a result, she called me a “fat bitch” and I questioned whether or not we were even really friends.

This person and I made up, but I learned in eighth grade that it was too true to be real. She had made up a neighbor boy of hers and used this boy to talk to me; to flirt with me. It was always through her number, as were my conversations with her “British aunt” who would give me advice. I learned it wasn’t real when I heard the whispering in gym class. Glances at me while a group of them snickered, catching pieces of their conversations like: “I can’t believe she thinks he would date her.” As one of them left the classroom that day, they called back to me:

“Enjoy your fake boyfriend!”

It has been years since middle school, but the ideology that these situations instilled in me has never changed. I had body issues even before being called a “fat bitch” by someone I had considered my best friend, but hearing it from somebody else made me realize how much of a problem it was. I began to dress to hide my body, to hide away from the world so they couldn’t see anything about me. I thought I wasn’t worthy of friends, of any relationships.

When I opened up to my best friend in high school about how I truly felt about my body, I remember her telling me she was genuinely crying over it. She told me she would have never guessed because I held myself with such confidence that it just didn’t seem that way. It amazed me that she didn’t see me the same way I saw myself when all of middle school, it was clear everybody else saw me that way.

Fast forward to college. In high school, I came into my own, though the voice was always around. When friends I thought I was close to wouldn’t invite me somewhere when the rest of our group was invited, the voice echoed and said: “They hate you.” When my one boyfriend broke up with me, the voice said: “You aren’t worth it. You’ll never be worthy of love.” When I started college, I really believed this. I didn’t want to open up to anybody, either, that this was what was going on. I had suppressed it from even my family for so long that it just felt natural to keep it hidden.

In college, though, it seemed like the voice was proved wrong. On the first day of college, I found my best friend in my dorm and I still go to her about everything. We found a way to open up with each other about our social anxiety and introversion. Whenever we’re in a situation together where we’re very anxious, we can go back to one another and get through it. In my third year of college, I found my partner, a man who has taken my anxiety without feeling like he needs to fix it. When I’ve mentioned being anxious about something, he was quick to try to make me feel comfortable again even if it was just trying to change the situation I would be in.

I have found people to actually feel comfortable talking to about my anxiety and when I’m super anxious. There are still people who can never understand when I even tell them I’m an introvert since I can be very talkative after I get used to an individual, but I shrug it off. When people hear me talk about what’s going on in my head, they’re quick to say: “That’s not you.”

I’m here to say, “Yes it is.”