Failure

 

So when I was in elementary school and middle school I was always known as the super happy, super hyper child. I was happy very often and I was overly friendly most of the time. My peers would always get a smile from me, or some type of odd story. I was pretty much one of those kids who try way to hard to be happy all the time and I felt like I had to wear a mask of friendliness and happiness or else I wouldn’t have any friends. To you who are reading this you may be like “what’s wrong with being known for your happiness?” You’re right. Being known for a loquacious and fun personality is great, but keeping up that act is wicked hard.

There has been many days in my past where I was feeling down or having a bad day but I cover it up with fake “over the top” happiness. This is really hard, and it is a emotional and sociable type of failure because not only do my fellow peers and teachers think of me in a certain light, but if I ever experience pain or just an off day, it is ten times harder to go through it due to my routine fake emotional distributions. There have been countless times where I have a bad day, and people rush over to me asking “are you ok?”, “omg you seem really sad what happened?” It’s lovely that people are caring and would love to know how you are doing, but is it so shocking that I can have a bad day once in a while too. I find that when I am quiet for a while or sad sometimes I am either pressured with talking about my feelings in front of all of my friends, or I am overlooked people thinking I am just acting less happy for attention. This failure of myself to show my true self; who I really am, how I am really feeling, or just showing that I can experience bad days too, has changed me.

                When I got into high school, I decided that I was going to choose my friends more wisely; picking the ones who I know that I will have for a while and trust. That included my volleyball friends. We spent much more time together than most of my other friends and they brought out the best and worst in me. They always joke that I’m so sweet and nice, but as I got to know them better they hopefully have realized that I’m not a “happy-bot”, forced to be happy for the rest of my life. I remember during one game I had run to retrieve the ball three times, and every time, we still did not find a way to make a play.  At that moment I could feel my face growing even more red and I spun on them yelling “can we please just worry about getting it over?!” In that moment I had asserted myself as a real person. It made me feel good that I could finally show my emotions. Since then my volleyball girls are still here for me and I love them all! J

 

The failure of not being able to be me, has forced me to be me. I have learned how to show my emotions when needed, and that I can have a bad day too, I do like being happy, but I like being myself more!