What Makes You Different...

"What makes you different, makes you beautiful. What's there inside you, shines through and through..." Line from the Backstreet Boys' "What Makes You Different", which was also used in the soundtrack for Disney's Princess Diaries.

It is something that had become close to a litany as I embrace my uniqueness. Lines that had kept me from hiding who I really am.

What does it take to be real? To be open to scrutiny and judgment? To be regarded as 'different'? A whole lot of courage maybe, or just a real desire to show the world the reality of their misconceptions. We all grew up in a society that doesn't take too kindly to those who are unlike them, we see them label a whole number of people solely because they are different from themselves. But what makes being 'different' a bad thing? Something I always end up wondering about.

Look around you, they're all like you in so many ways. They go to school, study, play games, work, think, eat, and a whole lot more. And yet, for a simple action or characteristic that you have no part of, you will consider as someone not fit to be in your social circle. An outcast to a society-driven thought.

What a sad reality it is when we realize that a lot of the people around us wears a mask, to hide who they are as a person, to represent a fabricated persona in order "to belong". A life I also once led.

Based on experience, it is a doomed fate. Tyring to please everyone by being someone lead to nothing more than becoming their lackey, being bullied indirectly, accepting their cruelty, and toyed around emotionally. It leaves more battle-scars than joining a real war since they are invisible scars that left you feeling unworthy, and in worst cases, a person who doesn't deserve to live. Some would probably laugh, thinking this is an extremity, and there are those who will scoff, thinking there are no one like that at all. It is our own inconsiderate attitudes that sometimes lead to a much cruel fate than we ever could imagine. A fate that leads to a loss of self-worth, self-respect, and the loss of one's own identity.

Learning to embrace my own individuality, restoring my sense of self-worth and self-respect was an uphill battle filled with discouragment, and a lot of self-doubt. But what I learned from all these, by slowly being true to who I am, I gained true friends that love the real me, and being different cease to be an ominous concept.

Nowadays, I still hear a lot of comments calling me weird, and for most people, that would be considered such a big insult. For me, it was a term I learned to equate to being unique. Weird doesn't have to be a bad thing at all, because God made us all weird by giving us individuality.

For the friends who stood by me through the ups and downs of my eventful life, a heartfelt thanks!!