Growing up, everyone always tells you that "first impressions are everything" and as a child I believed that. I always tried to fit my personality into a little box when first meeting people, and I found that those friendships never really lasted that long. I never truly understood why those friendships ended until I realized that I was never able to be myself around those people. By filing down my personality to not come off too strong when meeting someone and to make a good first impression, I locked myself into the box that I put my personality into. I was stuck and I couldn't escape until the friendship dissolved and I was no longer friends with that person. With this realization, I moved on into a world that became much more enjoyable with many more friendships that I believe should last the test of time.
When I first started to stop caring what people thought of me, I was terrified.
"What if I never make friends?"
"What if people actually will just think I'm weird and avoid me?"
"Am I going to have to eat lunch by myself for the rest of my life?"
I had all these horrible thoughts rushing through my head. But then it happened. I met someone who was open to being my friend, weirdness and all. She accepted me, even though the only topic of conversation that I could think of at the time was how often girls change their underwear compared to boys. (We were in the laundry room, not as weird of a topic as you might think. And she went along with it. I now highly recommend it as a conversation starter.)
Because of her I didn't have to eat lunch alone everyday. She and her friends didn't avoid me, and I was actually able to make friends who accepted me for . From there it just became easier. This one person made it possible for me to stop putting myself into a box that I let define who I was as a person. I was able to finally allow myself to be who I really am at all times and be free of the idea that I would make a bad first impression and everyone would hate me. I realized that it does not matter if someone did not like me, because there was always going to be someone who did.
Today, I am able to be myself with the friends that I have and I am so much happier for that ability. Not only do I now have group of friends that love me for who I am but I am a lot more comfortable talking to people that I have just met. I have slightly less anxiety when it comes to class presentation or introducing myself to people that I just met. So moral of the story, I don't care if someone loves me or hates me, because I am happy with who I am. While I accept that I am in no means anywhere close to perfect, I am who I am and that is all that matters to me.
