I listen to mixes like this a LOT when creating. Felt real to add it to this message.

I sit in this moment of apathy and shame for not fitting my own self-inflicted mold. It shows up all the time. When I “fail” to be open and friendly despite knowing I’m a rather calm and reserved person. I get irritated that I never write about what’s popular, or write in the classical ways people are taught to. In film school, it was the shame of not caring enough about cameras and movies. Online, it’s not having the right voice or posting about the right things.

This started long before I had to deal with my peers. I’m a first-generation Ghanaian who can’t speak their mother tongue. I feel “wrong” more often than not. This month has been a reckoning with my self-projected wrongness. I woke up and thought to myself, “How can I be wrong for living my life?”

Self-acceptance is a flat idea. It’s not hard to claim to accept yourself. To own what you are is the hard part. I could blame neurodivergence or anxiety, but I feel I’ll always be examining all the ways I can’t seem to do the things in my life I ought to. I can’t get myself to care about having a real adult job in the same way I couldn’t convince my teenage self to care about Ivys. I am what I am, and my life has been a process of remembering this over and over.

I want to be a disciplined and committed person. I am that person, it’s just never what I want to commit to. I can post consistently as long as I never promise to. I can show up and exercise regularly as long as I never commit to a set schedule. I can flow in my relationships until I sniff unspoken obligation. Obligation destroys me. I can do the hard stuff. I can allow myself to show up. But when my arm is yanked, I become spineless again.

I don’t want to be herding myself out of obligation anymore. I know how nuanced I am. I know how full of life I can be. I will do the hard thing. I will do it with love in my heart. No more trespassing myself unless becoming something I am not feels true. That’s fun too, you know. Escaping to the distant planet of “A Different Life” just to see what it’s like on the other side. I’ll listen to music that isn’t really my speed, go to parties I’m not excited about just to feel part of a whole. It’s nice and more importantly, true.

All I want is the truth.

I’m going through this super niche experience of becoming myself. Some final countdown shedding type s**t. I told my roommate yesterday that I don’t really get anxious anymore, but it’s true. I don’t feel anxious at all. It’s this experience happening in my brain and a bit of my body, like being under a drug. It passes. I feel like I’m running. This can be anxiety, but my old anxiety was the type where I’d ruminate on an idea or situation all day until I could land on an answer that almost fit but didn’t. That became my life, how I experienced being alive.

I’m viewing my anxiety today as a state that isn’t mine to hold onto. I’m reacting to something, and I think, I know, it’s cosmic, existential fear. The kind that makes you feel crazy. The kind that makes you do things like obsess over philosophy and religion and rituals to make the anxiety stop.

I spent a lot of my life trying to fix who I was because that had to be the issue. I couldn’t believe I was how I am. That I go into the world as I am, and I couldn’t fix that. In fairness, I could. Some girls get lip fillers, others of us focus on being really smart and then super funny, but not too funny. Maybe moderately hot, but I can’t get myself to care. That’s my problem. My soul don’t care about this nonsense. My soul wants a cozy place to call home, a good chair, a great meal, and something to laugh about. I wonder if I’d ever write again if I knew I would still laugh and love and be part of society.

I was reading Princess Babygirl’s post today and felt that part of me that feels so wrong froth at the mouth. I don’t think the identity wars of 2015 are responsible for this existential mark. I was too autistic to catch on to kids bullying me when I was younger. I do wonder how it’s made me small. I can’t seem to stop being in spaces that make me feel like s**t about myself.

The internet used to be a freak haven, and now it’s a third space for people who don’t want to be themselves — persona city, roleplaying the self into oblivion, blurring performance and being. What does it mean to “be yourself”? I don’t think that’s the question here. For me, it’s “Are you willing to be yourself? What are you willing to sacrifice? Do you even know what you’re losing?”

What do I feel I’m sacrificing just to be who I am?

I’ll have to leave certain groups, it feels like. It’s because I believe it requires isolation, disassociating from the collective for individuality, which is partially true. This seems like the worst time to do that. To unmesh during a period of collective upheaval. But I don’t want to be taken by the wave. My soul demands to be sovereign. If I don’t listen, I’m doing this lesson module over again.

Being alone is the easy mode for being yourself because you can’t judge an isolationist. There’s no one to do it. But to stand tall in the crowd?

What are you sacrificing?

Probably estrangement. Maybe the fear of being pushed out against one's will. That’s not it, though. Maybe it’s the pressure of standing against the tide. You will feel it when you are pushed around. You will feel it when the friction comes. If you can’t go with the flow, you have to accept chaos.

At the sacrifice of my peace of mind.

No, at the sacrifice of illusory peace. The micro mirrors the macro. Allowing the tension means confronting what is not aligning with you instead of weathering it. It means you have to sacrifice what was never yours. It will feel hard because loss is hard. And then it will feel lighter.

So I must be myself at all costs.

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