Owning My Truth

"You have such a great voice, you should start singing", so I did and I recorded it to prove to her that she was right. "This looks fake, it looks like you are lip syncing", so I went ahead and applied in the school's talent show, I sang in front of the whole school just to prove to her that I can sing. "The CD you played was not an insutrumental, I can tell you are lipsyncing, again" she said.

"Your essay looks amazing, you can write" another compliment from another nice person. I was so flattered I wrote multiple poems and lyrics to prove to her that she was right, I was good. "This song is good, but I'm sure you copied it from google", "no, I did not", "yes, you did, you will not gain anything from lying" she said. This one hurt bad, all I wanted was to impress her so I went ahead and participated in a poetry competition and won an iPhone 4, but still, she said my rich dad bought it for me.

"The film you created is good, but not the best, good job on trying", not another nice compliment that will get me nowhere, I saw the pattern, this time I immediately applied for a film making competition, and I won second place. This time around I had to prove it to myself and not anybody else, it was not the best film, but it was really good.

"You looked so scared speaking in front of the whole school, I can tell it's your first time" now this one is not a compliment, but I knew I did so good that the principle had to call my father to inform him how much of a natural speaker I was. The same girl continued to talk about how scared I was to speak, but it did not matter to me to correct her, I just let her think whatever she wanted to think about me, and it felt good to own my truth.

Fast forward, more than a decade later, I landed my first full-time job and I fell into the same cycle again. "You are a star", "you are a gem", "you are a natural", "you did good, but not the best", "it was good but I was not impressed", "what wasted potential"... and then it hit me. Who am I trying to impress again?

Don't get me wrong, it did not hit me that fast, the sentence is short, but in real life it took more than 3 years to realize that I let everybody pull me right and left, tug of war, they all won and I fell in the middle.

This is what brought me here, to own my truth, to remember what I was made of. I am a multitalented individual who worked very hard on herself. Life knocked me over so many times, but I chose to get back up again. I chose to look at the bright side because I truly believe that posivity is stronger than negativity, but it needs to come from within in order to keep the strength contained. I will continue to be good at everything without dimming my light to make others comfortable. I accept myself exactly the way that I am, and so can you.