The Shadow of Your Other Self

 

Image credit: Pinterest

By Loveth Arikanki

Most times, we find ourselves playing a person we truly are not, wearing totally different character shoes, oversized, undersized. At some particular point in time, you’ve found yourself do away with some habits that were a part and parcel of your true self, due to them being termed “juvenile”, “immature” or “Unserious”, “flippant” or probably because they felt and seemed stale. You stopped singing the way you did, speaking the way you did, laughing at every petty joke, dressing the way you did, conversing with people that lighted up your grumpy mood and disposition, and now, you are left with an utterly different you.  One, always reminiscing on her past wings, how you used to be. “I barely had friends”, “I talked to every person, like I could  easily walk up to you and we became friends after our first conversation…oh! I had a lot of friends”, “I was the class clown”. 

Imbibed personalities you really wished you had then but now you feel like you could have just been you. He walked up to you to tell you he’s not really interested in skimpy girls, or he told you he liked ‘thick baddies’, so you changed your diet just to fit into his preferred, only for you to find him with a ‘thin nerd’. She told you she wasn’t a fan and devotee of the daily motivational posts on your status so you switched up to posting memes only for you to find hers filled with them.  They scoffed at your height or your body shape so you searched up on ‘how to lose weight easily’ but your incompetence in being consistent turned out to be a valid reason for your “I cannot do this anymore” stance. Or probably it worked out but now the new trend is, “of how being chubby is now a leveraged upon advantage” in fashion so now, you find yourself overeating at the barest and slightest availability of food, as far as it’s an assurance to be fat again or you find yourself stuffing and gorging in some junks in order to gain some “extra size”.  

These obsessions with how we are perceived creates a subtle but dangerous trap: we become actors in our own selves. Our self-worth, now entangled in likes, comments, applauses and validation. 

We often find ourselves at the verge of accepting our true self and loving ourselves for who we truly are, based on people’s standpoint about us and what we do. And honestly, it can be discouraging most of the time, leaving us a full cheque choice, in dipping back on our flaws being a valid reason for disesteeming our true value. 

But here’s the truth, you should not try to force being everyone’s idea of acceptable. Be real. 

Being authentic doesn’t mean dismissing feedbacks or shutting out opinions because they would definitely surface. Rather, it means learning to weigh perspectives without letting them define you. It's about embracing the courage to be disliked for who you truly are, rather than loved for who you pretend to be. And truly the reward will save you the cost of self-denial.

So, ask yourself- not what people expect, but who you are when no one sees and when no one is watching. The version of you, raw and unfiltered. 

This is not just an advice, it is a push, more like a persuasion to return to what makes you-you, to resume to the motivational posts, the giggling over petty jokes, and even the childish attires and enjoying who you truly are because, there are definitely people who really love them but decide not to tell.