Since this is in some senses a topic I’ve written about before, I’m going to keep this short and sweet. Thanks to the incessant rain and a calendar full of impending copy deadlines, I’ve been pretty checked out during my downtime and working my way through a major binge of all my go-to garbage shows. It’s weird watching the way the protagonists act and realizing there was a time when I thought this was normal, acceptable behavior. Seriously, so many of my favorite characters are actually really selfish, terrible people. It’s made me realize my 16 year old self was way too prepared to throw down with a nemesis at the Met gala. It's also gotten me thinking about people who constantly victimize themselves- and how I used to be guilty of this same habit.
Growing up is about figuring out who you are, but pop culture, social media, and unlimited internet access made it easy to be sucked into this wormhole of feeling like just plain ‘ol me wasn’t enough. She needed some bells and whistles, and maybe a Fendi bag. Most of my entertainment was reading and watching these beautiful, troubled character archetypes tear through their lives and everyone in them and be called storms. Art. A beautiful hell. I wasn’t really conscious of what I was doing when I began slipping into new personas for a little confidence boost, and it was innocent until I realized I’d forgotten where I set myself down. I was floundering in all these different versions of myself, grasping wildly at whichever one I thought would make me feel better- or at least have other people see me as something better. Because I while I was convinced I was exquisite in my chaos, I was still also something that needed fixing. But by viewing myself as a victim of circumstance, battered by the troubled sea of life as I saw it, I was unable to take accountability for myself. No matter what I did or said or who I was unkind to, there was always a reason that my behaviors were not my fault. Think Season 1 SVDW.
But the thing that seems to be repeatedly left out is that in real life we are human beings- not natural disasters.
Now, I watch people being sucked down into the same marsh and it makes me cringe. Nothing rubs me the wrong way quite like watching people glorify their bad behavior and call it poetry. From my own lens, this behavior stems from lacking a firm sense of self.
I can only speak for my own experience, but maybe they’ve gotten too lost to know where to begin finding their way back to themselves, or maybe while they know where they are, they’re too scared to look that person in the eye. Maybe they aren’t proud of them, or they carry too much history and too much pain- but if you are never true to who you really are, how can you ever know what you want with any certainty? Trepidation to an extent is understandable, but there is a point where indecisiveness becomes a selfish excuse. People who don’t know what they want hurt other people, no matter what pretty words we try to dress it up in.
For me, there was this kind of pivotal moment where it was all just too much. My new personalities were chafing against the people who knew me for me, and I missed that girl. It was time to drop the drama, own up to who I was, and handle all of the shit that came with that. I started working on a life I really loved- instead of the one I felt like I was supposed to. I think this is a fork in the road that nearly everyone has to face eventually. I know a lot of people who struggled with varying adolescent identity crisis, and have grown up into resilient, mature, wonderful human beings. Because past this point, chaos is not admirable- accountability is.
It’s easy and aesthetically pleasing to write beautiful tragedies with ourselves cast as the perpetual victim; to adopt new personas and talk about the things and people we are pretending to be as if that is who we are. I did it for years- but trying to convince others to see me as the person I wished I was never made me happy. There’s a difference between aspiring to the qualities you admire in others, and wrapping yourself in a charade of them as if they were your own. Instead trying to write a life philosophy that is on-trend, live something that is real. Rediscover your integrity and cling to it. I’ve found that no matter how uncomfortable it is, when you are honest, kind, and authentic- that’s the difference between playing the victim and accepting the faults we’d rather not see.
As with all things in life, I’m well aware admitting to our shortcomings is easier said than done. It took me years to even begin and hell, I’m still working on it. But in the long run, being yourself is the only thing that will give the validation we are so desperately seeking- because when it comes from within, you didn’t beg for it. You become the protagonist instead of the victim, acting instead of simply reacting. The dragon and the knight in shining armor at once. Or you can spend the rest of your life slipping in and out of other people’s skins and asking why this always happens to you. But from where I stand, human beings are not Pinterest quotes- and we deserve more than that.