I’ve gotta say, social lives in today’s society can be super difficult.
Growing up a kid born in the early 2000s, a teenager in the 2010s, my life was ruled by the internet, I was thrown into the beginnings of social media as it is today and developed as the platforms did.
All of the expectations and stereotypes and things that we judge each other on, look down on, build up, it created a toxic way of thinking for me, about others and about myself. I felt the need to conform to the idea of the ‘stereotypical, perfect teenager’ a lot of times when I wasn’t that. I had different interests than my peers, I had different ideals, I learned I was queer and trans, later that I was neurodivergent, and that’s why I didn’t fit into the ‘mold of the perfect teenage girl’ because I wasn’t that, like others born the same sex and year as me.
And yet I still conformed, changed my personality to fit into what others wanted, repressed parts of myself so that I could have friends, and refused to allow those pieces to come up because those people stopped liking me after. It was brutal, exhausting, painful, for friendships that most of the time, I felt tired and unfulfilled in. I had only one friend until I was 13 that I never felt exhausted by or had to shape myself into someone else and I will forever be thankful for them.
At 22 I learned that the people I have the most fun with, the people I feel closest to, the people I love the most, are the people who I didn’t change for. I learned that I’m not compatible with everyone for friendship, but I found the people I was compatible with and didn’t change who I was for them to like me more. I was myself, my true authentic self, and the people who I call friends today are the people who saw me the same way I saw them.