Be Yourself

Growing up I was always told I was a spaz, my parents always told me “I could talk to a fly” they said, because I wasn’t afraid to talk to anyone as a kid. There was a particular time when I was about 10 years old. Me and my family had gone to a wedding for my older brother and his wife. There were only a handful of kids my age and I wasn’t very close with them. So there I was, all alone at a wedding, with a hundred or so people whom I did not know. There were some people gravitating towards the downstairs area of the venue, (mostly older men) and when I got down there there was this mini bar with two bartenders behind. Now, I wasn’t that tall at the ripe age of 10 years old. So watching a 10 year old try to climb up the bar stools must have been pretty funny to any adults around. But when I got up there, it was so fulfilling to me, I had done it, and now I was staring face to face with these to ladies on the other end of the bar. They were laughing at me…why were they laughing at me? So? I started to laugh with them. They looked at me with huge grins on their faces and asked me if I wanted a drink, I said sure, and they grabbed a shot glass and poured… orange juice. Do you think I’m a stone cold drinker? I took the orange juice and saw all the older guys around me downing the entire shot glass in one gulp; although their shot glasses had real alcohol in them. So I did the same thing all while these two bartenders were laughing at me. Glass after glass they kept pouring me orange juice, apple juice, and grape juice. Finally the entire bar was laughing with me like I was a 40 year old drunk, and I felt this hand on the back of my head it was my mom. Oh boy was she mad. She pulled me upstairs and scolded me for about 10 minutes for going off on my own and sitting at a bar with a bunch of strangers. But truthfully. I did that stuff all the time. I was the spazz they were telling me I was.

But as the years went by and I got older and older, it dawned on me that there are many different things that I did as a kid that I would not do today, going off and talking and spending time with random people that are 3 times my age? Absolutely not anymore. Today I would rather just sit in my room and watch TV or play video games or work on my car in the garage. I don’t think you could pay me enough to go to that bar again today, and moreover, in today’s society most teens suffer from anxiety or depression. It’s these things that make teens hate their life, get behind on school work, and fail classes. I’ve been there, had that extreme lack of motivation to even get out of bed and do school work let alone go talk to random people.

There are more than 3.7 million teens today that suffer from depression, and depression can come in many different forms. Sometimes it’s not  obvious. People could hide it well or not even show it at all. But if someone around you is showing signs of it, talk to them. Because we aren’t all carefree kids anymore. We have money and school and now college to worry about after we graduate this class. What am I going to do to make money? How am I going to stay afloat after school? Am I going to be able to afford to move out of my parents house? All of these questions make us worry and worry. That bar at the wedding all that time ago just goes to show how much the stress of life has changed me, some good ways and some bad. But sometimes it’s good to take a step back and remember the times where you didn’t have to worry about what you wore to school or what you did at a wedding, the bliss of not having to worry about what other people think of you. Don’t worry about what people think of you. Be yourself even if people think you are weird or annoying than who cares about them, all they do is judge you by what you wear and who you talk to on your off time. If we all just forget about those people who love judging people by their looks and who they talk to, and maybe if we got rid of that aspect then that’s one less stress factor that you have to worry about.

“Bar Stools at The Madonna Inn – San Luis Obispo, California” by ChrisGoldNY is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.