One of the first mistakes we all make as freshman is trying to fit in with the people who are nothing like us. It’s a feeling that we all crave at some point in our life: to be liked, loved, admired. We crave attention from people who we would never give attention to, only because it makes us feel good. We want everybody to like us, but for what?
Why come to school every day and force yourself to hang out with a crowd of people you don’t necessarily like? The more and more you ask yourself this question, the more and more you realize how silly it is.
Most importantly, you can’t change yourself so you can fit in. Well, you can, but it isn’t going to do you any good in the long run. All you’ll be left with is some friends who think they know you — but in reality, they probably know their 75-year-old neighbor better, and you’ll be a person you don’t want to be.
We are who we are for reasons unknown to us, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any reasons. Can you control the fact that you absolutely despise hot Cheetos, but your best friend won’t stop eating them? No, you can’t. Can you force yourself to eat them? Well, yeah of course you can. Are you going to be happy later when your mouth is on fire and there is no water in sight? Probably not.
Take the hot Cheetos as a person you have absolutely nothing in common with, and who you just don’t really like. Forcing yourself to be friends with someone (or to eat a food that you hate, in this case) isn’t benefiting you in any way. You think it’s helping you fit in, but is fitting in really that important? It’s not nearly important as you may believe.
What you need is a best friend (or two or three or four) that you can tell absolutely anything to. A best friend that you can laugh with no matter where you are. A best friend who cries your tears and is almost as happy as you are when she finds out something good that happens. You need someone you’ll love to the ends of the earth one minute and the next want to throw them off of a cliff (with no intention to actually ever do it). You need a best friend, or however many best friends, who you like, love, and admire for who they are. Give them the attention that you crave not because you know they want it too, but because they deserve it. And I promise you once you find those best friends, everything will start to fall into place.
Trust me when I tell you this though: some best friends don’t last as long as forever. Friends breakup too, and friend breakups are just as hard as an intimate breakup but you only grow from them. It only makes you a stronger person and in the scheme of things, it shows who really is worth fighting for, and who you just need to let go of.
Whatever you do, just be you. You can’t change to fit into a crowd of people you don’t really care about. Most importantly though, you need to search for who you really are and then stay true to you. You’re nothing if you can’t find yourself, and you’re nothing if you can’t be yourself.
High school isn’t about fitting in, not even a little bit. High school is about finding yourself and being yourself. It’s about figuring out who your real friends are and who they’re not. It’s about so much more than faking a few friendships. And once you realize it, you’ll be so much better off.
