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When I stepped out of my parent’s car and found myself walking toward my dorm, all my stuff piled in my arms, it was more a sense of relief that struck me than a feeling of fear. I was happy to be stepping out into this new world, glad to be leaving an uncomfortable home in favor of creating a comfort zone. I felt that going to college was finding my comfort zone, not leaving it. I left my comfort zone in the seventh grade.
In the seventh grade, I was already developing pimples, I was taller than all the girls, and had wider features. In short, I was a boy. I wore boy’s clothes, my hair was cut like a boy’s, my demeanor was rude and silly much like a boys, and I even looked like one. It made things hard for me, to be this awkward pre-teen with no fashion sense or any sort of charisma. I could not make friends; no one wanted to hang around the weird tomboy with the untamed hair. This would not have been so bad if I had not had the natural urge to fit in.
I wanted it so badly. During lunch, I would see the girls and watch them as they chattered and gossiped. These girls were idols to me, these popular girls. They were not plastic dolls with sculpted everything and hip length blonde hair. Instead they were self made beauties, as if they had handmade their doll like form; ordaining there drab eyes with heaps of eye shadow, their thin lips with enough lipstick to give their lifeless form a boost. They would paint rouge across their already cream coated faces, perhaps to conjure up some life from their otherwise lifeless faces.
In a sense, they were an organization, one that I had studied closely. In order to sit at this table, in order to get to speak with the cute boys and get dance partners at the dances, you had to dress like them, think like them, be them. I bought into it. I wanted it just that bad. I bought the over priced clothing they all wore. Small barrettes began to ordain my wild locks and I threw all my independent thoughts to the wind. I became a doll just like them, painted with a masking façade of conformity.
Somehow, it worked. I was invited to this table. That had to have been the greatest feeling of elation I had ever had prior to that point. I was on the road to being accepted. They sat me down and giggled and joked about my appearance. They discussed my personality, they analyzed me. Most people would have been insulted but not me. This little awkward pre-teen was ecstatic. Then they laid down the rules. They named all the things I had to improve about my self in order to be their friend. They corrected the way I dressed and insisted that I had to wear makeup. And like an idiot, I listened.
Over the next few months I began to develop as one of their “friends”. I changed my clothing, I began to grow out my hair for the first time since I was six, and worst of all I changed my attitude. I became them. My parents noticed. They knew that another piece of me was dying each time I went away to school. They did not speak of it though. I know they were worried but they kept their distance. I admit now, they did things right. They let me discover and make my own terrible decisions.
Finally, I was invited to their table again. It was time for them to make their choice. Was I good enough for them? Had I changed appropriately? I remember sitting down across the table from one of the main girls. She stood up from her seat and looked down at me as she was placed on a pedestal. As if I had not been there, she described what I had done over the time that had passed and how I had changed. They laughed, clear as day I can remember them laughing. “You can’t be one of us,” one of the girls had said and it her words cut threw my heart. No, I had not made it into their entourage. They were still unimpressed. They made sure I knew that they never meant to become my friend. I would never be good enough for them. I would never be accepted. It devastated me.
That was a time in my life that I care not to look back upon. For the majority of the year to follow, I was quiet, withdrawn, and angry. I was nothing more than a mere shell of my former self. I found friends but they were fleeting. I had become comfortable again and they had yanked the rug from beneath again. The two friends I thought would heal me had tossed me aside. In short, seventh grade was Hell. I could not understand what I was doing so horribly wrong to be treated the way that I was being treated.
Something dawned on me then. I was comfortable. I was comfortable trying to tailor myself to fit everyone else’s pattern. It may be hard for someone looking in from the outside to understand but even though I was miserable I was doing the only thing that was comfortable to me, imitating. It had to stop. There was no one for me to lean on; there was no one to help me. I had to branch out. I had to leave the comfort of being like everyone else and become myself.
This proved difficult. In truth, I had no idea who “me” was. How was I to go about finding someone whom I had no idea about? I started by dressing like myself again. I bought my first t-shirt with a cynical message pasted across it and began to wear my much loved cargo pants. No longer did I have to worry about being someone I was not. Though it seemed like this freed me I was in fact very frightened and had many worries and discomfort. It was hard to not follow a set pattern and to just be myself and it had plenty of setbacks. One of the first was the simple fact that I became very alone. That awkward pre-teen became a weird loner that no one would talk to. I found it to be so much easier to pretend to be someone I was not just because I did not like being alone. For awhile I contemplated conforming again just so I would have the company of others. But then things started to change.
For the longest time, I kept my hobbies and interest a secret because it was considered “geeky” and “lame”. I didn’t tell anyone that I ran home from the bus stop every day so I could catch the next episode of a Japanese anime on Cartoon Network and I certainly never told anyone that I could practically bet Super Mario Brothers with my eyes closed. But my confidence began to grow; I began to talk more about what I liked. Slowly people began to approach me and talk to me. Finally I was gaining new friends. Before long I was surrounded by five of the best friends I will ever have and all because I had to courage to be myself.
With my new found wisdom, I passed these girls several times on the road of life, each of them never breaking their mold, none of them smashing their death masks that blocked their uniqueness. The more I grew the more I saw their image as dolls slowly seep away. Their masks began to crumble in my sight and I saw the face beneath, the cruel and angry face of truth. It was not that they were ugly beneath their makeup but that they were ugly beneath their skin. Their personal being had been broken and warped by the media and their own experiences. I began to pity the dolls that I once idolized.
Now I’m growing again. I’m making my own decisions without waiting to be told what to do. I’m being more open about what I really think and what I really feel and what really interests me. No more do I try to fit with everyone, instead I just act the way that comes naturally. It is a much easier way to live, much more comfortable.
Even though my comfort zone was a very painful place, leaving it was a hard and treacherous journey. I was able to branch out despite all the obstacles and become who I really am. I could not be happier. Looking back at my former self no one would recognize me. That was me in my old comfort zone but now I have found one in which I am truly happy. That girl at the table years ago was right. I could not be one of them. I could only be myself.