One of These Days

Glad that I am who I am

“Sometimes when everything seems at its worst when all conspires and gnaws and the hours, days, weeks and years seem wasted – stretched there upon my bed in the dark looking upward at the ceiling I get what many will consider an obnoxious thought: it’s still nice to be myself" ― Charles Bukowski

Your thoughts on Bulowski's comment? Do you think it's obnoxious to be ourselves?



I think it's funny that we joke about liking to be ourselves is obnoxious. It's something I've always fought with myself for nearly as long as I've been alive. I've been obnoxiously shy which didn't really start until like the end of fifth and into sixth grade? Not that I was Miss. Extrovert or anything, but like I think I noticed that cliques started and not everyone was your friend. I'd probably even say fourth grade, which was kind of when my life changed a lot. My parents went bankrupt and I had to move out of my house that I'd grown up in and loved. The yard was my favorite part and I had secret places that only I'd hang out in. We had to live with friends for 3-4 months before we got our own place. I think I changed a lot then and I think I only remember my shyness really standing out in those years.

High school was awful with having to stand up in front of the glass and going over some report I had to write. I hated it. I literally would stutter and my knees would shake. I had awful social anxiety. Like AWFUL. I remember the beginning of seventh grade, we had home coming and I went because yknow, why not. A guy wanted to dance with me and I LEGIT didn't know what to do. I walked out of the school and found some secluded spot outside.

Anxiety has also been something I've had to deal with too. Not a wonderful combo by any means. I never realized how long I've had it until really recently. I know it's something I've always dealt with, but it kind of hit me the symptoms and stuff and how I'd feel those things as early as middle school and I had always just assumed it was because I was shy.

So dealing with self-esteem issues, shyness, and anxiety has made me hate myself for a long time. It's probably since my parents passed the end of 2012 and the first month of 2013, where something switched in my brain. And not that I still don't fight those issues, but I've realized how much I've learned to like myself. I'll find different qualities within myself and I like them. So that has been new for me, to not just hate myself, but to like myself too.

This quote actually made me laugh a bit because I had this thought a few months ago. Where I was laying in bed, in the dark, and I realized that I was glad that I was myself.