Hello to whoever kindly reads my posts! It can't really see each one of you in person, which is really sad, but I get to see how many people hopped into my posts. And it's always good to know that someone read my posts even though I blog mostly for myself. I'm not a famous blogger or anything by any means, so of course, I don't have a lot of viewers, and I know my blog doesn't deserve to be a big thing. If I really want to make this professional, there are many things to do. But at this point, I don't have a fixed schedule for this blog, and I don't really proofread each post to make them be better essays before I publish them. But wow, this is the Internet; my posts always manage to get viewers somehow. I must have been making lots of grammatical errors and misspelling words for countless times because English is my second language, and my posts tend to be long and droopy. But if you've ever read my blog, even just once, I am very grateful to you. So, thank you!
Alright, so today, I am going to write about how good and awesome it is to stay true to you. I can talk about this because I myself had to learn this through my life; I have a living experience. I don't and never will do this anymore, but I used to fake myself just because I wanted to look cool, and I wanted to be liked. I wanted to have lots of friends, and wanted to be in squads (We didn't have that term like 10 years ago, though!), because (at least I thought) those were how cool kids are. Now, I am nothing like that. (If you said to yourself, "Girl, I know that. I can see that through your blog," at this point, that is awesome! You know me, and you're in my team! Congrats! lol) I wish I had known better then, but I was even younger (I'm still young!), and you know, we're not Almighty Gods; we all learn something along the way.
It was always hard for me to love who I am. I've always been weird, and a bit shy. I didn't have lots of friends. Well, I have a younger sister, and we are far from being similar to each other. Most people don't even notice that we're related unless we introduce ourselves, and tell them we're family. We don't look alike to each other at all, and we are very different in our personalities also. My sister is very cheerful, optimistic, never take things too seriously, friendly, fun... Everyone sees why she has lots of friends. And she has always had lots of friends. I remember comparing myself with her all the time, and envied her. I used to think she was better than me, and I wanted to be like her. Well, I don't think my sister is the only reason I could not love myself, and felt inferior, though. But for some reasons, during my childhood, I always wanted to look pretty (because I thought I was ugly), be surrounded by people, and be popular, which, I thought, would make me a cool kid.
During the last year of elementary school, I started to fake myself. I wanted to be in a squad where pretty girls with pretty clothes belong. And I managed to get in. But oh my gosh, they were as mean as they were pretty. And I was so afraid to be hated, and to be kicked out of the squad that I pretended to be mean too, which I know, and knew was wrong. So basically, they were my first fake friends. And I was too scared to be real.
After I entered junior high, things really changed. I didn't go to the local school near my house, and instead, I took an entrance exam, and went to a different school from the students in my elementary school. During the first spring semester, I did everything to appear cheerful and cool, and I did succeeded. I made lots of friends, and I was in a group for cool kids in my class. And it felt amazing! That was all that I had ever wanted. But sadly, it didn't last long. During the fall semester after the first summer vacation in junior high, I noticed that I had lost many of my friends. I noticed that I wasn't surrounded by people. There were less people around me. I guess the reason why that happened is that people realized that I wasn't trust worthy. I wanted to liked by everyone, which is 100% impossible. In order to be liked by literally everyone, you have to give up consistency. And doing so, it costed me a lot afterwards.
But that's not the end of the story. Phew! During the next school year, I made really good friends, whom I still can proudly call them my friends. Here's why it happened. Every year, my school did a class reformation (or a class shuffle if that's easier for you to understand?) like most other schools do too. So, every April, when new school years starts, you have to check which class you are appointed to, and meet your whole new classmates. Oh, for those of you who are not familiar with Japanese school system, which is totally fine, here's a piece of information. In Japan, teachers come to classrooms, where students await, to conduct classes. In the U.S., each teacher has their own classrooms, and students show up to their rooms to take classes. But in Japan, it's the other way around. Alright, end of the excursion. So, during the second year of junior high, I was with different classmates, and luckily, I got to meet with amazing people. That's the reason. lol I made good friends because I was lucky! Those people who became my friends were all considered to be weird and different. Oh, sweet! I've always been told that I was weird and different also! And what was really eyeopening to me was that they were completely fine being who they are, and completely fine being weird and different. And thanks to them, I could tear down the shell, and be who I am. And they stayed with me for who I really am. No more pretending; no more fake friends. It was so comfortable being myself, and not having to be worried about whether they were going to hate me.
I am very proud of my friends. They are intelligent, fun to be with, and so down to earth. And we all hate the mainstream. lol Oh, and when you have true friends, you don't care about how many friends you have. This is an important lesson I learned. When you're around with good people, you don't fell insecure. And since then, I stay with people with whom I think I'm comfortable being around with. I stopped thinking I had to be popular, or being popular was the only way to be cool. And now, here I am. I still don't have lots of friends like people who do have lots of friends. I don't think I'm popular. I'm still the weird me. I stay at my house to quietly read books on Friday nights, instead of going out for drinks with people. My phone doesn't ring much with texts and phone calls from people other than my family and my boyfriend. But it's way better than having a bunch of fake friends, and faking to look cool.
Another characteristic my friends share is that they don't text or call a lot. We don't interact with each other much online. When we text to each other, that's because we need to, like when we want to check in with each other's schedule to make some time to have dinner together, or go out for drinks together. And when we're done with figuring out our schedule, and have agreed on a date, time, and a place to meet, you say goodbye. We follow each other on social media. But other than reading or seeing each other's posts and pictures, and liking them, we pretty much do nothing, although of course, sometimes we leave comments, and have a little conversation. Now, some of my friends live relatively close to my place, and the others live far away. But even though it's hard for us to meet up frequently, and we don't really utilize IT to contact each other, we know we don't have to constantly check whether we're still friends or not. And when we meet, even after several years, it doesn't feel awkward at all. We can always jump right into a fun conversation like it was the day before that we met last time.
I have these awesome friends because I chose to, and choose to stick with my real self. I am very thankful to my friends. I don't say this much to them, so I am saying this here. Being authentic feels good. Being authentic means you accept you're not for everyone. Sounds sad? It's not, actually. Denying, and ignoring that you're not for everyone is sadder. Only when you start accepting you're not for everyone, can you start being authentic. And if you're not authentic, you won't be surrounded by authentic people. Surrounding yourself with fake ass friends is the same as surrounding yourself with straw men. You won't get anything meaningful from fake friends. Instead, you'll feel empty, insecure, and lonely even though you're physically surrounded by people. So, be yourself, and be just be open for those who really cares about you. Don't worry, there's always somebody who likes you, if not everybody.
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