Trying to Fit in

Hey everyone, welcome back to my blog!! I am currently in Mallorca and it is so lovely here. I have been taking a bit of a break from being constantly stressed (or well trying to). I have been waking up early and going to yoga classes, then working out, eating right and just taking care of myself in general which I have always been super bad at. I find this is a really controversial thing but I really love waking up early, it makes me feel so good and it feels like I have a small special moment alone with the universe because the world is asleep and it's just me and the sunrise. Today's post is about something I have always struggled to do so it might get a bit vulnerable at times but hey, oversharing on the internet to people who don't care about my life is kind of my thing hehehe.

I have always grown up very introverted. I feel like having an extremely extroverted family can make it super stressful, especially for younger me. I always thought there was something wrong with me for not liking big crowds or after spending time with people, even the smallest things would make me feel overwhelmed. It was mainly confusing because everyone around me seemed to love being around people all the time and while I do love spending time with my friends and family, I also value my alone time. 

I have also always had a passion for some really odd things, I don't mean this in a "not like other girls" sense. I feel like I have always had really random interests. Aside from sports, reading and other hobbies which is something many people enjoy, it's more the kind of books I have been interested in or the questions I started asking from a young age. When I was little, I remember talking to myself and asking myself questions like what if a baby grew up alone, would it learn English or their mother tongue? Or other really random stuff. I started getting really excited and passionate about trying to find answers and wanting to keep on learning, I could almost describe myself as being greedy for knowledge because there has always been so much to learn. While many other people were wondering about whether they wanted a princess or mermaid party, I'd be trying to think if it was possible to prove mermaids' existence. This makes me sound like I was some born genius, I swear I'm not, I have worked very hard for my intellect but I have always just been an extra inquisitive person. 

The passion I developed made me super excited and talkative which seemed to be a bit much for people to handle and I was always told to not talk a lot around others. I then kind of went into a bit of a shell and thought that wanting to find out these things was not normal and that I should stop talking. I started restricting myself and tried to change myself in order to try and fit in with other people.

 I mean it worked for a few years when I started secondary school but then I realised that pretending to be extroverted and forcing myself into situations which either bored me or made me uncomfortable was a waste of time. 

I don't really know when I had this change in attitude because I have always considered myself as someone who has done what I enjoy and doing things no matter what other people thought but I almost brainwashed myself into liking things other people liked so I could fit in. I had another spiritual awakening at around year 9 and realised, what the actual hell am I doing with myself?

I managed to get out of the cycle of doing things to please others and trying to fit in with the crowd. Trying to fit in with people kind of made me lose my sense of self. When I was little, I have always been told that I had a really strong sense of self and I was determined to get that back.

It took a really long time to unlearn some old habits (some of which I am trying to fix to this date) but eventually, I figured out that trying to fit in made me lose my individuality and my genuine interests in life. 

When I was younger, a lot of people used to laugh at the fact that maths was on of my favourite subjects and it kind of made me start to dislike it. The thoughts that other people have or the things they tell you has a really big impact on your thoughts, even if it's on a subconscious level. When I started to embrace more of the things that I enjoyed, I decided to take maths as a A-Level. I have no interest in a career in maths, nor do I want to do it at university. In fact, I am just about scraping an A in maths so I'm not even that good at it but I took it for the pure enjoyment of the subject, just like how I chose all my other subjects. 

The essence of what I'm trying to say is that everyone has different interests and no two people are the same. This is something that has always piqued my interest, if nobody is the same, then how does a 'crowd' for people to fit into actually form? Even if someone had the same interest, there would surely be differences in their opinion, so how can the crowd actually be created? I feel like everything in life is just so subjective that this crowd doesn't even exist in the first place. We think that there is a right or wrong way to think or be, and while basic morals such as do not kill people are in place, there really is no right or wrong way to think or be which means that trying to fit into a crowd and changing yourself for others is not beneficial for anyone. If anything, it causes more harm to yourself than it does cause goodness. 

This is why, after many years of trying to unlearn social 'norms' I have decided that just because I may like certain things that many other people may like, does not mean I should abandon or quieten down my interests that make me seem a bit 'weird' or 'grandma like' as my sisters like to say because at the end of the day, it is my life. No matter what anyone says or does, I'm the one that has to get through this life and spending it doing things to constantly please others or to fit in will not serve me any purpose and therefore, I simply refuse to do it because I've come to a conclusion: as important as any person or thing may be in my life, I come first. Whether this means saying no to plans because I'm not mentally up for it or refusing to buy the latest pair of shoes because everyone has them even though I thoroughly dislike them.

I think this went super off topic but to be honest, when do my posts ever stick to the topic? I'm also super sorry for the quality of this post, I feel like it hasn't been up to my usual mark but I have had a huge writer's block and honestly don't even know how I managed to write this. I am hoping it is gone by next week so I can get a good post out there for you guys!! See you next week, love you guys <33