I didn’t like myself much growing up. I can’t pinpoint exactly when this started. Even in early memories, I felt like a tone-deaf banjo player trying to hide within a prestigious orchestra. It never took people long to figure out I didn’t belong. I’d give myself away by asking the wrong questions or saying and doing the wrong things.
A habit of moving from place to place in the hope of escaping and reinventing myself began in my teens. A move to Cork at age fourteen was the first attempt at a relocation transformation. I desperately grasped a potential bright side in the chaotic breakup of my parents. It would be a fresh start in a new city. Of course, it didn’t work. I repeated this pattern and over and over again right up until my mid-thirties.
What you hate follows you. Just like a dog with shit stuck to its fur, moving to the new location didn’t fix the problem. The “me” that I was trying to hide refused to be abandoned. In fact, it seemed the more I tried to run away from myself, the bigger the asshole I became.
It was only by facing this “demon-self” I realized it was me who made him a demon. I’d got it so wrong. Inner shame prevented me from realizing the only thing I could ever be good at was being me. So, rather than moving from orchestra to orchestra with my out-of-tune banjo, I stopped pretending to be a banjo player.
Being authentic means having the courage to be a flavour. Of course, not everyone is going to like that flavour. The alternative is to try your best to be bland so you don’t upset anyone, but even if that works (good luck with that), who would want it?
Authenticity means moving away from who we think we are (which is basically just an echo of the opinions of other people) to being who we are. This is the easiest thing in the world. It just requires that we let go of the shame and stop trying to be someone we are not.
As for me, I feel compelled to question things. Nothing is off limits when it comes to my curious mind. It no longer matters if this means I won’t fit in. Accusations of being “away with the fairies” don’t scare me anymore. I now wear the badge of “space cadet” with honor. It turns out that my odd way of looking at things is what led me to what I most wanted.