Honesty

“When you're in high school your life is focused on trying to be cool and impress people. College must remove those feelings, and anyone who still has that attitude past college will only get too full of himself.”

I can't remember where I read that or if those are the exact words. When I was younger, I'd go lengths to impress others. Now I want to smack my previous self to a wall. I wanted to be accepted, so people will think I am something. My role in life was that, but soon I realized that I wasn't thinking of myself first. I now saw what the others meant, what I've never seen because I was busy trying to impress: oh, that girl vying for our attention? Wala ginasapak sa balay?

That's it. No matter how much I convince myself that it was a long time ago and I'm different now, I still feel it gnawing. Forgive yourself, you were only 11 or 12 years old. Move on. I can't. My brother dubbed me with the mocking nickname of 'Miss Reminisce' because of my talent: flashback and replay embarrassing experiences and feel so bad about them again. Something from years ago, but damn, sometimes they feel crippling that I wish I wasn't born.

I think, what if people from back then still see me as the girl back then. But if I still care or think about whatever they may think of me, isn't that still me living for their expectations and not for myself?

The other realization is people don't care. They don't care if I care or not what they think. I shouldn't let something petty bother me.

Come college, I've seen that there are more pressing concerns in the bigger world than my own little world. I'm only one among 6,928,198,253 in the world. Its easy to say I don't matter. These thoughts that come to me when I'm in a crowd, and I don't feel like anything special. There's always someone better out there.