Be Anything, But Don't Be A Wannabe

Let me be honest with you.

I wasn’t always the person I am now.

I wasn’t the girl with the sardonic, sceptical sense of humour. I wasn’t always the girl who took a long time to decide who was right and who was wrong. I wasn’t always the outspoken “I-don’t-like-the-way-you’re-treating-me-and-I-think-we-should-discuss-as-to-what’s-going-on” character either. I wasn’t a girl who always chose her friends carefully because she feared that some of them might only like her for getting their profits and not because they enjoyed her company. 

I was someone who was oh-so-nice.

Correction: I was someone who was oh-so-naïve.

***

It happens, you know.

The will to be a part of the IT crowd, the desire to be loved and the desire to be popular – who wouldn’t want anything like that?

If anyone’s reading this, don’t you ever deny the fact you ever had the urge, the desire, the yearning to be something more than ‘ordinary’.

It happens to everyone! Every single person in this world has a wild desire to be looked upon, to have company that’s so renowned in the societal circles for being oh-so-smart or for being oh-so-beautiful or for being oh-so-mischievous!

Every single person in this world, deep down, has a wild desire to fit in, to belong somewhere.

It’s not something bad, to be frank. People are creatures who, after their basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter, luxury and blah, blah, blah), need company.

They need each other, for mental lightness, support and sanity.

At one point there’s your family, a brood of people with whom you only share your genes with. They are the people who are always with you, no matter what happens.

So no matter how much you fight over property and no matter how jealous you are of each other’s wealth and fame, you’re always stuck with each other.

But there are some people, aside from family, that make our lives worth living.

Friends.

A friend is always a person on whom you can always rely on. A friend is a person with whom you share your innermost thoughts and your innermost frustrations. A friend is someone who will tell you the ground reality and not paint a sugar-coated, unicorns-and-all-things-nauseatingly-happy for you.

(Okay, no offence to unicorns because I desperately believe that they exists)

And no matter how much you deny it, every single person out there needs a friend.

***

The tricky thing about friends is that you cannot get them easily.

There is a wide variety of friends who you will have to come across.

There are friends who you know, right away, are right for you. There are friends who are unfeeling and cold at first – then, they show you their warmth and their readiness to embrace you in their arms. There are also friends, who are closest to you for a while, but then they leave (thanks to the distance barriers!).

And there are those kinds of friends.

You know, who are perfectly all right on the surface.

Correction: who are absolutely perfect on the surface and they emanate this aura of fame, glamour and exclusiveness which seems really addictive on the first glance.

Because of this, you end up really liking them.

Whatever they do – be it throw a banana peel in the dustbin or even spit on the ground – attracts you. 

They are alluring, attractive and they are so perfect.

You feel like you could kill to be a part of that crowd.

That wish, that desire, that desperation… it becomes so strong that you end up doing whatever they want in order to “include you” in their oh-so-exclusive clique.

You start dressing like them. You start using the same gestures they use. You start speaking like them. And finally, just to complete the transformation, you start thinking as narrow-mindedly as they do.

Hell, you end up having a freaking personality transplant!

I know, it sounds so wrong and sounds so weak and it sounds so nasty, but it’s true and it happens to everybody.

It happened to me too, back when I was thirteen.

Thirteen wasn’t one of the best years of my life, to be utterly blunt.

Two of my best friends had changed schools and I was left with friends who were clearly not interested in me as a person and were too interested exploring things that they deemed as cool.

To my face, they were nice.

But behind my back, they thought I was ‘immature' and I wasn't really 'worthy' to be a part of their oh-so-exclusive clique. 

(I never knew that disobeying, lying to your parents, keeping boyfriends/girlfriends and experimenting with wrong things was being mature. Darn, I really was a child. Tut tut)

Of course, me being the idiot that I was, I was still nice to them.

They were treating me like a freaking pup or a lion from a circus and I was totally fine with that.

Because I craved company like anybody else did.

I'm not trying to paint myself as a saint. I'm painting myself as the fool who valued to be a part of a crowd than her own dignity. 

If there's anything that I refuse to do now, is to lower my dignity just to make friends or just to live hassle-free. If there's anything that I'll teach my younger cousins to do: it's to be dignified and not a wannabe. 

Somehow, I am glad about the fact that I didn’t do anything drastic like say, a personality transplant.

But, I’m really ashamed of myself for the fact that I put up with their fakeness, their shallowness and how they treated me.

Am I still in touch with them?

That would be a big N-O.

Hell, I don’t even remember some of their names, let alone their birthdates.

***

So, the whole point of this meandering, confusing, befuddling, post is:

Do anything, but don’t be a wannabe.

Don’t ever start pretending to be somebody that you’ve never been.

Don’t lose yourself in the process of getting friends.

I’m not saying it because it’s a ‘wrong’ thing to the other person. I’m saying this because it’s a wrong thing to you, your mental health on the whole.

Embrace yourself and accept who you are. Don’t go for people who refuse to accept you for the way you are and who are only interested in you because they want ‘lackeys’.

Such people are the epitome of narcissism, even more than the Greek dude Narcissus himself!

They are deeply insecure, troubled beings who revel in making others squirm because it helps them feel better. They don't care about the anguish that you go through in order to fit in to their whims and fancies! 

Don’t surround yourself with such morons.

Be real and you will end up with real friends – friends who love you, friends who care for you and the friends who will make you grow better as a person!

Stay awesome as ever,

Much love,

Archie