Just Be Yourself

Just be yourself”, Phil said to me in the tech room where Chromebook parts lay scattered around, filling up every shelf and cabinet. With a backpack in one hand, he slipped out of the ceramic door of the cramped room into the spacious library. It was the end of lunch and we had our classes next. 

Even though Phil was about half my height and weight, with a beard and long hair by junior year of high school, resembling a mixture between the average Nordic man and Jim Carrey with youthfulness spread across his face, he was more popular than me. It wasn’t popularity, but instead having the attribute of being a topic of discussion for many people at least, and at most, an idol. I had brought up to Phil during this lunch session that I was confused about how so many people came up to him on our walks in the hallways. They seemed to attract him like flies to the lamp that laid dormant in my dad’s house. He would be dismissive about the popularity he obtained, stating that I was looking too deep into things and that he wasn’t that popular. I wanted to believe that what he was saying was true, but when I was with him, I wasn’t the third wheel, I just didn’t exist. At least a third wheel got recognition from the other two, but I was just standing next to him, never getting a look at the person who ran up to him to gush over him. I wanted to know what I was doing wrong. Maybe it was the fact that I might have looked ugly to others, or maybe I was hated secretly by the people at my school. Phil told me it was because I wasn’t “myself” in front of strangers. 

“Just act like that one time in that  history class.” He was referring to the time in which I mistakenly said that the chemistry teacher I had was my “daddy”, which was supposed to be an innocent joke, but the ramifications didn’t hit me in the head until people started to laugh. Yet, I didn’t know what “myself” meant nor who it was. In all honesty, I tried to present myself to my peers as a quiet, hard-working, and soft student. I was that at heart, but also I gushed over Fallout and would rant about the political implications of the NCR; being a motormouth. Yet I was crude and rude, easily getting jealous of others. I didn’t know which one of those me was the “real” me. I played well into each of those me’s that I ended up not having a central identity. 

My fears didn’t lie in having a central identity, but realizing that my identity might be repulsive; pushing people away like some creature from the dark. I thought that there was a chance that my “real” personality had long nails, teeth that shut like hedge clippers, skin that rotted, and a fatty belly. The fat I had scared me the most and it could’ve been my weight that caused people to scream. 

I brought this question of my “real” personality to Phil and he only shrugged, “I don’t know.” Yet at the same time, I think I did know, but didn’t at the same time. There was once during a club meeting where we were playing some Mario Party game, and he brought up to the teacher who ran the event, “This is the person I rarely get to see, he is always shy.” Maybe that is why I was not able to get people to come up to me and talk. Yet, I am shy because I don’t want people to hurt me. I know how cruel people can be and how they will rip and tear at you for being different, especially at the high school I was attending. My peers said they didn’t care about who you were, but that was a lie, I saw them isolated students with disabilities to those who identify as LGBTQI+. 

I found it easy to connect with younger students at my high school, but maybe it was because of pity from them. The truth is that I treated the younger students at my high school with care and didn’t try to make them feel that they were lesser because they were a grade lower than me. I didn’t care for that power dynamic because I felt that I was isolated from others due to it. 

Maybe it was because of the power dynamic at the high school or something else at play, but one memory kept reappearing in front of my eyes like a ghost from an undying dream. It was the end of my junior year of high school and the seniors were trying to get their books signed by everyone. I was with Phil and another friend, Mike, while we signed our names onto books. It was them who were doing the signing, no one ever came up to me. While we sat on a sticky cafeteria table in the main hallway of the school, two members from the school band came up and asked Mike to sign their book. I had known those two for around three years since I joined the band during my freshman year, but they ignored me, no, they forgot about me. Then they asked Phil to sign their book. I wasn’t there, just a ghost invisible to the eyes. I realized this soon enough and felt anger towards the band members who didn’t ask for me to sign their book even though I spent three years with them. I felt anger towards Mike who only knew them because he had a single class with them for a year. I felt anger at Phil because why was he recognized as existing and I was nothing but an imaginary figure. I was angry with myself, why didn’t I do something to change that? I quietly left my friends from their walk in the halls of our school and went outside, to the stone fence that resided near the teacher parking lot, and sat on it. Legs were crossed and I was hoping for someone to come to me and ask how I was doing, for some ounce of kindness. I got nothing. Now I realize this simple fact, you are not going to get saved or cared for by someone out of the blue, but at the time I still believed it.

“It doesn’t matter,” Phil responded when I mentioned this series of events with him during the last months of high school. The reasoning was that the band members, my peers of mine, and those who didn’t recognize me, didn’t matter in the end. They were all terrible people, who were rotten to the core. Yet I wasn’t trying to be recognized and seen by them specifically, instead, I knew I wasn’t charismatic and appealing. I joked to Phil that if he was a character in Fallout, he would have ten points in charisma, while I had zero. I predicted that later in life, Phil wouldn’t struggle with meeting new people, socializing, and making friends. As it is now, my prediction was correct. I was jealous that I didn’t have that ability. I was ashamed of myself for not being born or working on that charismatic charm that Phil had. I wanted to easily meet new people and not be lonely. I am lonely. I live in a hole in my mind, just rotting there because I know that people look at me with eyes of disgust. 

“You got to make yourself more known,” Phil prescribed as I asked why he didn’t have any memories of me before fourth grade but I did of him. This remake came up because me and his friends hung out at our old playground in the town, where everything changed. It was the dead of night and the moon peered through the clouds to spy on us. We walked on the wood chips in the dark blanket, with a spirit of wind peering through us. We reminisced, and I only showed up in his memory a handful of times, but my other friends were there in his life. I knew it was because I was a shy kid who was violent, but that was that. As we got to Phil’s wreckage which is his den where me and his friends hang out, we sat around talking. I didn’t talk, they talked. I didn’t know what to say, I was afraid to say anything. Then I realized I didn’t exist in the room and I felt sick. I quietly left, said my goodbyes and drove off into the night. 

I wanted to live in the night, to not feel ashamed or in pain. I had wished I was forgotten by my previous teachers not because of any deeper meaning but because I wanted to look tough for the lack of impact I had on the conscience of those I met. Each year, the teachers I had forgot who I was, even though I was praised for being a good student. Sometimes I wish to melt into the lush earth and be hugged by the grass. I have always thought I was too strange for the real world and wanted to be cut off from it. Sometimes I wish I knew what it meant to “just be yourself.”