me. my life.

So often, we lose sight of ourselves. Like, you know. "Conforming." That word that big Christians use to describe something that everybody does: Changing. Not maturing, not growing up, but changing in the sense of unconsciously making your life look like someone else's life, making your quirks like someone else's quirks. You know how that goes. We've all done it. Conforming. Comparing. Changing.

I'll use a simple example from my own life. All my life, I've always left my hair down, done nothing to it. I've always let frizz control it, because I never knew anything other than that. The only variety I had was sometimes I pinned back my bangs, with the bobby pin dorkily sticking out from my head. And you know what? I didn't really care. And my hair was so healthy - true, it looked rather unattractive. But like I said I didn't care. Now I tease my hair to ridiculous heights; I bouffant it; I french braid my bangs instead of clamping them flat to my head with a bobby pin; I curl it; I straighten it; I crimp it. This is definitely not a bad thing. I thank the good Lord that I finally know how to do my hair. I can use another example that's not good, how I've tried to change so I'm more like everyone else.

But Regina Spektor explained it quite well:

everybody's features have somehow started blending, and everything is plastic, and everyone's sarcastic, and all your food is frozen, it needs to be defrosted.

If everyone is like everyone else, then there's no such thing as freedom. If the world's definition of normal is fake, and everyone is obsessed with being normal, then there's no such thing as real.

I just can't do fake anymore. I've been down that road, and it leads nowhere.

But you know, there's two sides of the spectrum. Faking fake, and faking real. Faking real is just as bad as faking fake; worse, maybe. Painting yourself as a person who you want everyone to see as perfect. Perfect religion. Perfect life. Perfect emotions always perfectly in control. Always with a perfect smile on your face, always with the perfect verse on your lips.

I've also been there, and it only results in hopelessness, emptiness and desperation.

When I try to be someone I'm not, whether it be the perfect Christian or the perfect Fake, everything gets screwed up. I get screwed up. I guess God just made it so that we are who we are, and we just have to accept that.

Maybe I don't have enough money to have as many clothes as this girl does. Maybe I don't have enough hairspray to rat my hair into a brick wall. Maybe I'm not the skinniest, or the prettiest, or the funniest. There's always someone that in our eyes is "better" than us. Maybe they're five pounds lighter. Maybe their family is five dollars richer. But so what. I just have to learn to not care anymore.

The only way to be real is to be me.

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