Skip to main content

# Epiphany -- I am the one I should love in this world

It was my first day at my new school. I joined in class seven. In my new class there was a group of really good looking girls and guys; I refer to them as “the popular gang of class seven.” The girls had their hair done well, they had flawless skin and neat and clean nails. Of course they all had done waxing and all those things to remove arm and leg hair. I admit, the guys were quite good looking, and most   probably all the girls in class seven (including me) would have had a crush on them at least at one point of time.


Now, it all started when I interacted with one of them. I don’t want to mention his name but I will call him Mr. X for now. I developed a secret crush on him and if I still had it right now, I would have written a whole paragraph about his looks.  I liked him anyway and was desperate to look good and get into the gang so he would like me too. So I decided to try to look good for him, thus leading me into buying crop tops that looked awful on me because I slouched and did not carry myself in a ladylike way. I also tried to clean my leg hair, something I regret doing.

I could not get his attention so I decided to stalk him, another thing I regret doing because all he would do is go to the football ground and class or football ground or the lunch room. All this is a small description of how cool I tried to be, but failed and that left me sad, in depression and in a terrible rage.

One fine day, my best friend introduced me to a Korean kpop group known as BTS. I then found what I was looking for; listening to their songs and watching videos about their hardships, speeches at award ceremonies and their interviews helped me realise what I was missing.

In one particular speech at the United Nations, UNICEF actually, the leader of the group, Kim Nam Jun, stated “True love begins with loving yourself.” These words left a great impact on me and got me thinking; was I not paying attention to myself? Was I devoting all my attention to something I would probably never get? 

A solo song by one member of the group also touched me and helped me get out of this trap of looking ‘cool’. The song’s name is EPIPHANY. It is about a sudden realisation of loving yourself. 

“It’s so odd, I loved you so much for sure...
I wanted to give everything to you, I wanted to live for you...
But as I kept doing so, I became unable to bear the storm inside my heart...
I get to fully reveal my true self under the smiling mask...
I’m the one I should love in this world...
The shining me, the precious soul of mine I realise only now,
So I love me...
Though I’m not perfect, I’m beautiful I’m the one I should love.” 

I felt as though this song was written for me. It was so relatable and so helpful that I downloaded it to my apple music library as soon as I heard it. I now play this song at least once a day, on the car ride to school, to remind myself of my past and to love myself.  I am listening to the song even as I write this article.

However everything that happens changes something in oneself even when things do not work out. I have now become more open to people and have no fears of confessing my feelings to them. I don’t think a hundred times about how they will react. 

Now that I have stopped acting weird, I have become sure of myself and because of being sure of myself, I have gained more self-confidence.Earlier I used to ignore my opinion of what I wanted to do and run after what    Mr. X likes to do. I chose pottery because he did when I wanted to do art. I wear shorts to school with unshaven legs and am not wondering what other people would think. For a whole year, I wore only tights to cover my legs because I was self conscious. I have long slender toned legs and I enjoy it now.

I longed to sing in the school band and last year I actually did. I was in a band with kids from other sections but I did not care. I auditioned to be with them and when they saw that I could sing and would do what they asked of me, they took me. Over a period of time, I got to know them.

A girl in the band said that her mom was a single mom and that she lived with her uncle while her mom worked. She said she wrote songs since she was very little and dreamt of being in the Grammies one day. A boy in the band, whose voice was rather feminine and was teased about it, was the only one who could hit the high notes. Another girl, who I knew earlier because we are together in the gymnastics team, discovered a new talent where she could sing and play the tambourine at the same time.

The four of us sang. But there were the guitarists, a violinist and a drummer who supported us. I discovered these silent guys who were in the background but would cover up whenever we singers made a mistake. I learnt to notice that and thank them. After our big performance, everybody came and told me that I had been amazing including a girl from the popular gang in my previous year’s class.   

I made new friends who were not part of the ‘cool’ gang but I found them cool in so many ways. They did not give me looks whenever I passed them or say “Hi” in a certain tone whenever I greeted them. My new friends are kind hearted and understand my problems and help me in the best way possible.

So to all the teens out there who try to look good so that a guy/girl likes you I suggest you stop hiding your true self underneath a smiling mask because people only like you for the real you and not for the fake you.

So come on girls and boys make some noise like the Americans would say:

“I’m the one I should love in this world... 
The shining me, the precious soul of mine I realise only now, 

So I love me...”.  

Lakshmi Viswanathan 






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Independence in School -- It is the 72nd Year of India’s independence. But we still haven’t been freed from the colonial school system.

The main reason we have not been able to get rid of it is because parents don’t see it as an enemy. I don’t feel free in school at all. I love to learn. Learning makes me happy. But for me learning and school are not synonymous. School is a little bit of learning but a lot of boredom. I feel I have wasted a lot of time. There is so much I wanted to do. But in the eight hours I’m able to do so little. When I reflect at the end of the day, I have learnt two or three things which could be summed up in very little time but we have a spent whole day on understanding them. I feel very trapped because I feel that I’m part of a very scheduled system; something many students have gone through but nothing  constructive ever happens. What kind of freedom am I looking for in school? Uniforms:   Uniform is the worst part of school; the shirt is made by the cheapest material you can find, and in one wash it looks as if it's been through 5 years of use. The pants are the cheap
Post a Comment
Read more

What's beneath all that Jolly stuff in High school?

So I’m in grade 9 now, and well yes! I’m surrounded by cute, caring high school couples and besties, and partners in crime, and chai buddies and - oh you get the point, right? This all looks jolly and stuff, but really, what’s beneath it all?  We only like to befriend people who’re funny, nice, cute, sweet and, though we hate to admit this, somewhat pretty and good looking. Have we not heard these phrases before? ‘Well, at least your hair looks good’ ‘Lol, puberty’s failed him- look at all those pimples’ ‘She cut her flesh, that weirdo- such an attention seeker!’ ‘You’re lucky to be anorexic’ ‘Well, I’ve got a pretty pair of jeans but they won’t fit you’ ‘You’re not - you shouldn’t lose weight’ They may sound like a joke to others and the speaker itself, but it leaves a deep impact on the listener. They either choose to ignore it and move on to see the ‘bright side’ of people’s remarks, or they just get stuck to these comments and think about it day and night, or they are too nu
Post a Comment
Read more

My Colony -- Home to only me, or to the street dogs too?

At a young age, my experiences of going out of my house to play with my friends created a stereotype in my head that street dogs are dangerous and they bite, though I did not know the reason for the dogs biting. I could not even bear my grandmother’s dog licking me because it seemed to me like he had bitten me.  As I got older, I met different people with pet dogs in their homes; I became comfortable with them. Then my best friend rescued a pup. I visited him often and watched how he took care of her. Soon I was able to pet her, have fun with her even holding her up close to my face. I did not know then that one year later, I would be adopting one of her pups.  As I started getting comfortable with dogs, one autumn, I noticed that dogs in my colony have started a spate of attacks. Unable to bear it, I eventually asked my mom the reason for these frequent attacks. The answer I got was  “Dogs bite mostly when they are on ‘heat’, for they are very energetic at that time.”  D
Post a Comment
Read more