In my life I’ve always wanted to please everyone, I stretched myself. I made myself into whatever mold people wanted me to be, I would be calm and collective with other people then outgoing and wild with others, this task at the surface seemed so easy. But in reality it was so strenuous and almost painful, stretching myself into the molds of these people, never getting a break, I started to fear, I feared people finding out about my molds, people finding out I’m not exactly who they think I am, I lost friends and groups of people just to keep my molds hidden.

What I feared most was losing myself. I feared not being able to be myself, to always have to be someone else, fit some other standards, I feared being stretched out. I hated the molds I built for myself yet I couldn’t stop, I feared what other people would think, how they would think of my sudden change, I feared leaving the only thing I had that was fully set, fully built for me by me, I was a prisoner in a cage I built for myself.

I soon started to lose myself and lose self respect for myself too. I only did what others wanted me to do, when they wanted me to do it. It then evolved into a form of self hate, it followed me wherever I went, the thought of me being my true self soon started to haunt me, a ghost, a self loathing ghost, that annoyed me and told me I was a loser or I was weird, the confines of all my molds were melted into one constant voice, that voice was mine, I was my own ghost, my own mold, this ghost stayed with me for years and years, constantly taunting and criticizing me. I was trapped in this cycle.

I hated waking up in the morning, I knew the voice would be there, to make fun of me and to make my day feel awful. Soon the molds started to feel more like reality than my imagination. A reality that I hated, then I decided that if I couldn’t fill out every mold on demand then I wasn’t worthy, I still to this day don’t know what “worthy” is or was to be honest, it just scared me so bad to not be enough, I started believing that all that mattered was the molds.

But one day I finally snapped. I was so tired of these molds and all these rules I had set into place for myself and all the fear and expectations, I just snapped, I yelled and cried and laughed and a flurry of emotions just came out of me, in this moment I realized how different I’ve become from how I used to be. I lost myself in all of my molds. I then decided there that I would change myself for the better, make myself a better me.

© Jayden. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.