Feeling misunderstood can be a quite sad and very lonely road.
For as long as I can remember, I have always tried to be more like the people I have surrounded myself with, just so I can be liked or accepted. The fear of being judged or made fun of didn’t allow me to reveal my authentic self for the majority of my life. And I only shared that very important side of me with 2 or 3 people. I am not really sure how that fear was formed or created, but if I had to guess I’d say it comes from my childhood (shocker, lol).
I think I had a happy childhood. I say I think because when I look at pictures of myself from when I was a kid, I see a happy little girl playing alone or with her cousins and mostly dancing and singing around the house. But the truth is, I don’t remember most of my childhood. I know my brain has suppressed around 90% of those memories probably to protect me from any type of pain I felt growing up. Isn’t it amazing how our brains work? My brain is literally protecting me from myself. Or it can be that because I have aphantasia – the inability to visualize things, (aka my mind is blind AF), and that makes it nearly impossible to remember any early memories. Fun Fact: I recently learned that the majority of people can actually see things in their minds, and here I thought this whole time it was a figure of speech when someone would say things like “imagine” this or that. #MindBlown lol. I know, right?
Anyhow, I am not sure what the real reason is behind why I can’t remember most of my childhood, but some of the things I do recall briefly include watching my mother compare herself to her older sister. I also witnessed and listened to some of the adults in my life spout nonsense about those who dared to be different, labeling them as weird or strange. Growing up in a very judgmental environment where everyone is always comparing and criticizing each other impacted my life tremendously without even realizing it. Which is why I grew up with the fear of not being liked for who I truly was. And just like my mother, I also started to compare myself to others. It first started with my cousins, then it progressed to imitating my school friends, and suddenly any sense of individuality I had vanished.
It didn’t help at all that I migrated to the US when I was going through puberty while also dealing with my parents’ divorce. I remember feeling like a complete outcast on my first day school, as if I were an alien visiting Earth for the first time. I felt so out of place and confused because I didn’t know anyone and didn’t speak a word of English. Good thing I was placed in a bilingual classroom, but truthfully, I really don’t remember how I made it through the first day of school. But I am almost 99% sure that my almost 13-year-old self wanted to die. The culture shock was definitely real, and in order to survive this new reality, I did what almost any teenage girl would have done in a brand new place. I blended in and became like some of the girls in my classroom in order to prevent feeling misunderstood.
I spent the majority of my teens and 20s trying to be like everyone I surrounded myself with. I had no sense of self, nor wanted to get to know me because, honestly, I hated myself. I wasn’t content with who I was or how I looked, and I constantly compared myself to my girlfriends and my cousins, but mostly to girls on social media. It didn’t help that I kept chasing the attention of men, and in order to attract boys my age, I thought that I had to be “a certain way.” On top of that, I grew up in a household where some sort of expectation was placed on me without even realizing it. The feeling of having to fit into this mold was present almost all the time, and of course I resented that. Deep down, I knew I didn’t want to be put into this imaginary box that was created for me. I just wanted to be me. Whatever “Me” was. Everything I had experienced up to this point in my life made me suppress everything that I really was. But mostly the feeling of being misunderstood and judged was always there, and the result of repressing very important parts of myself had me living a very unhappy and unhealthy life for a very long time.
It wasn’t until I started to really do some inner healing work that I noticed my true essence slowly coming out. Something in me awakened that helped me no longer care about the opinions of others (or maybe it was the fact that I was turning 30 and I stopped giving a f*ck about a lot of things lol). But the fear of being judged started to finally disappear after all of these years, and it felt so freaking liberating. By nurturing my inner child, I began to finally accept and love all aspects of myself, even the weird parts that I had kept hidden and neglected for so long. Everything started to come out to the surface, and I no longer had any intentions of keeping anything concealed anymore. I embraced all parts of me, including the very weird ones that I didn’t like or felt ashamed by. And just like that, I became free, like my girl Elsa when she ran away to the forest to finally explore her powers, which helped her find inner peace and build her beautiful ice castle. Yes, Frozen is one of my favorite Disney movies #LetItGo.
Feeling misunderstood or different from others can be really lonely and painful, but at the same time, it can also be your superpower. It only depends on how you choose to see it. The real magic happens when you finally remove all of the extra layers that were added for protection and allow your soul to fully shine. But it all starts with you, by learning to love and accept all parts of yourself, and that can only happen when you stop seeking external validation. It took me 32 years to acquire this knowledge, and I can only hope my story inspires or helps anyone who is feeling the way I felt for the majority of my life. It will get better, I promise you. Trust and believe in yourself and your journey but most importantly, love yourself the way your inner child would want to be loved.
<3