the courage to be disliked (Or, The Courage to Read This Whole Damn Thing in One Sitting—Bless Your Soul)
a personal reflection on belonging, shame, and self-acceptance. It contains raw emotions and introspection that may be deeply relatable, but also heavy. Please read with care and an open heart.
If I’m going to be brutally honest, most days I don’t feel like I belong here—not in this world anyway.
You would never know if you scrolled through my Instagram, or if you saw me out with my friends. You wouldn’t suspect if we went out on a first date, or if we met at a party downtown.
I’ve always been surrounded by people—my family, my high school swim team, my sorority in college. My peers have nominated me for leadership positions, and I’ve never had trouble making friends. People are shocked to hear that I’ve been able to pick up my life and start all over again twice, even as an adult in two major cities.
Nobody would ever think to label me an outcast. But what if I told you that I consider myself one?
Would you believe me if I told you that despite being surrounded by others, I have never felt truly accepted for who I am?
That despite the several DMs I receive from women weekly who see my content, saying they relate, I’ve always felt alone and invisible?
I can show you a highlight reel of my life, where there’s proof that I have built a world where I am liked, fit in, and am even admired.
But it will never be able to show you that I have never felt like I belonged, that I’ve never felt known or seen, that I’ve always felt incredibly isolated and disconnected from everybody, even the people that claim to know me best.
Starting in grade school, we carefully study our classmates, mirroring their behavior, figuring out what parts of ourselves are acceptable to show and what parts we must bury forever—we push and pull in an elaborate dance, with each movement revealing just enough to give us a “personality”, but never enough to risk “individuality.”
Instinctively we know we must toe the line at all times, or else end up like my classmate, Brandon, who sat alone at recess everyday, having been rejected for sobbing during homeroom on the first day of school. I cannot remember if I signed his yearbook back then, or if I ever saw him again after that year.
These days I wish I could go back in time to the third grade and sit alongside him, allowing myself to cry my eyes out too in solidarity.
I didn’t know it back then, but we were always cut from the same cloth.
As a little girl, I was shy, sensitive, and emotional, hiding behind my mother’s legs at familial gatherings, shirking away from distant relatives that would bend over to inspect me as if I were some sort of specimen on display.
As a quiet kid, I preferred solitude, rejecting my older brother’s invitations to play with his dinosaur figurines. I would spend hours walking around my imaginary classroom, playing “teacher” instead. I may have looked like I was alone, but I felt great comfort being in the company of my stuffed animal students, who remained patient even though they were endlessly re-learning how to do basic addition.
My parents once told me a story about something that happened when I was 5 years old. They heard laughter coming from my room.
Mildly concerned, they made their way up the staircase and upon checking in, saw that I was sitting in my closet all by myself, reading the Frog and Toad book series, giggling hysterically because Toad had just dropped chocolate ice cream on his face.
Purposely living in my own imaginary world, where I could take up space and be my true self was how I spent the majority of my childhood. I didn’t know it back then, but I suspect I was escaping the pressure to conform—to my parents’ standards, to that of society, and to cultural expectations passed down by generations of Asian-American immigrants. Though my brain had not yet developed in a way that allowed me to recognize how suffocated I felt, my natural instinct led me to seek seclusion anyway.
Even at 5 years old, I knew deep down something was wrong with me.
While I was around others, I tried very hard to fit in by being obedient and stoic, being careful to draw no attention to myself. Meanwhile, my mischievous older brother felt free to run around the house and be boisterous and loud. As it was, he was brilliant and academically gifted, so my parents had no real complaints.
He would often antagonize and pick on me, as brothers love to do, even though I had been quietly minding my own business. Anytime I would cry as a result of his relentless teasing, my mother would step in. “Alex!” she would say, scolding him, “Stop picking on your little sister!”
My brother would grin sheepishly and shrug his shoulders, with any hint of shame or blame seeming to ricochet right off of him.
Meanwhile my mother would turn to me and say,
“Stop being so sensitive. Stop letting other people control your emotions.”
As my brother continued to run amok the house, his interest shifting back over to his dinosaur toys, I would try to stifle my tears, wiping away the snot running from my nose, feeling too ashamed to look at my mother between the mess of matted hair and chubby fingers covering my eyes.
“You have to be strong,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders and shaking her head in slight disapproval.
After quieting myself, I could finally bear to make eye contact with her again. I could see that my mother loved me deeply and that she felt sorry that my brother kept picking on me.
At the same time, I could feel that she felt helpless to control him or so perhaps believed it would be better for me to become someone who would never get bothered, who would never show emotion, who would never react—someone who she believed could withstand the harshness of the real world and be strong in the face of adversity—someone who was decidedly not me.
My stomach was tied in knots, and I felt a heaviness on my chest that made it difficult to breathe, but I swallowed this feeling the best way I could because I knew my mother loved me, I knew she only wanted the best, and I could see that I had upset her by crying. By giving into my emotions, I had made her sad and anxious, and because I loved my mother so much, I resolved to work harder to suppress my feelings next time. Back then, I desired nothing more than to make her happy and see her smile at me again, with the same fondness that was directed towards my older brother no matter what kinds of mischief he got into.
So I made a secret vow to myself to shrink down, and from that moment onwards, I have been shrinking myself ever since.
I suppose this is why when I saw Brandon openly sobbing on the first day of school in homeroom, my nine year old self felt a strong propensity to stay away. Though he was the only other Asian American classmate I had, I could not reach out to him, and so while I did not feel any sort of disgust towards his expression of emotions, I felt an odd sense of pity and annoyance.
I wanted to urgently slip him a note. Why are you letting other people see you cry? Can’t you see everybody is uncomfortable? Please shrink down and be quiet. Don’t cause any problems.
I found myself turning away from him to follow behind a gaggle of fair skinned, blonde classmates to the cafeteria, with a paper bag lunch clasped tightly under my armpit.
Turns out that the Hannah’s and Katie’s at school were carrying brightly colored, patterned lunch boxes from Target this year, and I realized with dread that I had already committed a faux pas on the first day of school, bringing my food in a brown paper sack. As much as I wanted to help, I could not afford to empathize with Brandon—I needed to survive. So I pushed away any feelings of pity, and I filed resolutely back into order, marching behind the others, never looking back. I shut off any guilt or regret I might feel and directed my efforts towards fitting in.
Sadly, I did not realize until now that when I had abandoned him that day, I had also abandoned myself.
As I sat next to the other girls at the lunch table, content to even be included, I had no understanding of how devastating the consequences of this repeated self abandonment would be, and how it would come to shape the first twenty-eight years of my life. Back then, I thought it was already enough to be seated at the table. Only with time and experience would I come to find out just how wrong I was.
Until the age of fourteen, I could not remember having many emotional outbursts. Looking back, the landscape of my memories from that period of my life is gray and flat—with no peaks or dips, or joy or color. In the sixth grade, I had finally been accepted into a prestigious private school that my parents had been trying to get me into since Kindergarten. I tucked my oxford button-down blouse into a plaid skirt every morning, loaded up my textbooks into my Jansport roller backpack (they were really in back then, I swear!), and went to school dutifully, attempting to not only fit in, but also stand out academically amongst the most privileged, educated girls in America.
At twelve years old, I stayed up until two AM in my room on a Thursday, studying for a test for Mr. Jean’s infamous history class. It was the first time I had ever encountered an essay test, and I had no idea how to study. A week later, Mr. Jean returned our papers to us facedown.
Before we could look at our scores, he cleared his throat, holding a single essay in his hand. He waved it around briefly, flourishing it for the class to see. Then he began to flip through it, reading parts of it out loud. When he finished, he smiled and said, “Since this is your first essay test, it’s okay if you didn’t do too well, but I just wanted to commend Elizabeth here for doing such an excellent job and show you that this is what I expect next time. I gave her a 99%.”
The class looked over at Elizabeth in awe and clapped.A bead of sweat dripped down the back of my neck, and I could feel my armpits growing sticky. While Elizabeth beamed shyly, the rest of us looked at each other anxiously, scared to turn over our papers and see our scores.
With one hand, I covered my eyes and dared to finally peek between the cracks of my fingers. Turning over my paper, I winced, bracing for impact. At the top of the page in the right corner margin, there was a 72% circled in dark red ink.
Immediately my stomach dropped, and I quickly flipped the paper over on my desk so that no one else could see. Glancing around the classroom, everyone else seemed relatively content with their scores, as if the nervous tension in the room had simply evaporated. Some girls next to me started to converse about their weekend plans. I directed my gaze back down at my feet, and I slid down lower in my seat. Heat rose to my cheeks. My parents had worked so hard to put me in this school, and this is all I had to show for it so far. Deeply embarrassed and absolutely mortified, I forced myself to push away the lump rising in my throat. When the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day, I reluctantly made my way to the carpool pick up lane. My feet felt like bricks.
At home, my parents were setting up the table for dinner, and my brother was talking about his day. When we all sat down finally, I picked quietly at my bowl of rice with my chopsticks, unable to summon an appetite. My parents and brother discussed their favorite topics: Who was the top of the class so far? Who was slated to receive academic awards at the end of year assembly? How many kids had gotten into Harvard last year from his school? How many people in this year’s senior class were gunning for Stanford instead?
When they finally directed their attention to me, I could not muster the courage to tell them my test score. I could feel their eyes on me—expecting, demanding. What do you have to show us? Feeling as if I was under a microscope, I mumbled that everything was fine. Thinking I might burst from stress, I grabbed the crumpled essay test out of my backpack and left it on the dining table before excusing myself to my room. There, I laid in my bed in complete darkness and finally allowed myself to cry.
Nobody came to check in on me that night, and I returned to school the next day as if nothing had happened. Perhaps my family had sensed my deep shame and knew I would try harder next time. Either way, I was glad to escape any direct criticism. That morning, I tucked my oxford button-down blouse into a plaid skirt, loaded up my textbooks into my Jansport roller backpack, and dutifully went to school. The whole ride there, nobody smiled at me.
When I entered high school a few years later, I started to take a lot of interest in boys. By that point in time, my grades were embarrassingly average. At dinner one day, my brother shrugged and said, “It’s okay. Grades only matter in high school. Colleges don’t care about how you did in middle school.”
I nodded quietly, slurping up noodles from my bowl of Chicken Pho, one of my mom’s specialities. He and my parents began to talk about colleges again, including which he would be applying for that year. As they droned on and on about early admission and application deadlines, I let their voices fade into the background, and my mind drifted towards the new book I was looking forward to reading. My parents didn’t monitor what I read, probably because every book I had ever bought had cheesy covers that audibly screamed they were from the teen fiction section of Barnes and Noble.
Growing up Asian-American in a suburb and school system that skewed mostly white, I had already known my whole life that I was not the epitome of beauty. I could tell because at middle school dances, when girls and boys would stand in a circle and awkwardly socialize, no guy would ever make direct eye contact with me. We all crowded together in a hot gymnasium, blinged out in our dress attire, our foreheads glistening with sweat as Flo Rida blared from the speakers. Their eyes remained fixed first on the girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Next, the brunettes with a cute, button nose, fair skin, and freckles. Lastly, they would briefly pay attention to girls in my grade who were popular for their undeniable aura, despite what race they were, attracted to their natural charisma and wit. Though they were also minorities like me, the boys were forced to acknowledge their existence simply because their presence demanded it. Meanwhile, I struggled to maintain a spot in the circle, squished between the shoulders of two taller girls, trying not to get squeezed out.
The whole time, I never managed to catch a single look.
Even as their gaze periodically passed through every girl in the circle, going from right to left and left to right, it was as if every time they got to me, they stared directly through me, like their eyes had not even detected that there was a human there. Their eyes showed no flicker of recognition that I even existed, and if they did happen to look in my direction again, it was as if they were simply staring at the wall behind me, noticing the chipped paint. As I clutched onto my cup of punch, I began to wonder if I was actually invisible.
That night after the dance, I returned to my bedroom. My mother had finally agreed to let me wear some makeup, since it was for a special occasion. I could hear her ominous voice echoing in my head, warning me to take it off completely before I slept so that I didn’t ruin my skin and age prematurely. “You have such beautiful skin,” she would say, “You need to appreciate it. Look at all my spots. I don’t want you to end up like me.” Stepping in front of the mirror, I began to wipe off mascara (the first makeup I ever wore!). I gently tugged at my eyelashes with a makeup wipe, staring at myself in the mirror, half expecting to not even see anyone looking back at me—a confirmation that what I had suspected was true: that I didn’t even exist. To my surprise, my reflection blinked back. I frowned slightly—having been so sure she wouldn’t. I closed my eyes again and wiped, dragging the cloth along the bottom of my eyelids this time, pulling at my skin. When I blinked my eyes open again, there she was, staring at me. I kept closing my eyes and wiping, repeating this over and over again, until the wipe had turned completely black. As much as I wiped, every time I looked up, she was still there, staring right back at me, unable to fully disappear.
Later I nestled underneath my covers with the newest, most popular teen romance book in hand, flipping ferociously through the pages. I hungrily lapped up every line, smiling to myself with a certain giddiness as the author detailed the characters’ romantic connection and chemistry in delicious fashion. I re-read certain paragraphs over and over again, such as the moment when the leading guy catches a glimpse of the female protagonist for the very first time.
The guy knows that there’s something special about her. He feels it deep in his gut that he simply must talk to her, because although he has never noticed her before, in his 18 years of living in his small North Carolina town, there is something magnetic that pulls him in like no other. Not even the most popular head cheerleader could compare.
This mystery girl simply takes his breath away, so he starts in her direction. It is lunch time, and instead of trying to socialize like everybody else, the girl is sitting on the front steps of the school, with her nose stuck in a book. She is completely focused on each line, not noticing that a hot, high school senior guy is approaching.
I keep turning the pages, wanting to see what’s so different about her—I want to see why she’s so magnetic, and understand how she’s so impossible to ignore. I envy her, but not in a bitter way—I secretly look up to her, and I want to study her and learn her ways. I know I would make a dedicated pupil. So I hold my breath in anticipation, waiting for an explanation.
But the hot senior guy reaches her first before that is ever revealed, and I get distracted, immersing myself in their flirtatious dialogue, imagining how masculine and deep his voice sounds, and how perfectly feminine hers must be. I’ll reach the end of the book, feeling my heart soar with warmth and grinning from ear to ear, because they’ve finally had their first kiss. As it turns out, there never is a true explanation for the girl’s undeniable charm. All I know is that she’s the new girl in town. Also, she’s blonde, and her name is Annabelle.
Before I fall asleep, I imagine a future where some day, someone, or more explicitly, a hot and mysterious guy that’s about two to three years older than me, notices me doing absolutely nothing. I am simply existing and going about my life, but he can’t help but see me, study me, and know instinctively that there is something special about me. He doesn’t want to come on too strong, but he’s just too curious, and he knew he’d regret it if he lets me pass him by. So he musters up the courage to strike up a conversation.
Upon our first exchange, when we lock eyes, it is confirmed that I am worthy of his attention, that I am someone he cannot ignore. There’s nothing about me that inherently sticks out, but this man chooses me anyway because he sees my value. And though our relationship has its ups and downs, it is so passionate and consuming that he simply cannot help but stay by my side against all odds, choosing me again and again.
It’s ok that I’m not model-thin and that my eyelids are uneven sometimes. It doesn’t matter that I’m Asian or that I’m not good at geometry or that I’ll never get into Princeton. I may not be the prom queen, but he confesses that the more he knows me, the more beautiful I become. In his eyes, he sees me—not just my face or what I look like, but me, all the way down to the deepest parts of my soul.
I smile before allowing my eyes to shut, warmth coursing through my body. I can hardly wait for the day where I will be loved. I am only 14 years old, but I already am more than ready to be accepted by someone, who will give me permission to be who I really am. No adjustments. No censoring. No suppression. I gleefully anticipate the day when he finds me. I cannot wait to know that I am enough, that I am worthy of love, no matter what anyone else says.
Looking back, I wish I could have told her what I know now, which is that nobody was coming, that the love and validation I fantasized about did not actually exist in real life in the way I hoped. I wish I could tell her that I would be hopelessly yearning, longing, and desperately searching for the next fourteen years, embarking on a painful journey in which I twisted and contorted myself in every which way, trying to bring to life a dream that could simply never be—that I would sit on the sidelines as my friends got engaged and my cousins got married, that I would spend many nights in my room feeling unbearably alone.
The ache to finally belong to someone would become too familiar, setting up base in the chamber of my heart. My whole life, I knew I didn’t belong. Meanwhile, other women belonged effortlessly, to society, to their families. Women who had always been noticed in middle school gymnasiums, even if their hair was becoming frizzy in that sticky, humid air—they would notice my burning desire. Instead of holding space for that with kindness, they would relentlessly mock, shame, and devalue me in their heads or online.
“She’s so pathetic and gives off desperation—No man would ever pick her.” Sometimes the shame would be disguised as constructive criticism or helpful dating advice:
“You really need to get off social media and decenter men.”
“Guys hate insecure girls—but they love me because I’m such a bitch.”
“Nobody will love you if you don’t love yourself. Why would they? Love yourself more.”
It did not matter that these women insisted their criticism or advice was well meaning and only in good faith—I knew it was not. Being so hyper aware of my inherent “wrongness,” I had always been watching, studying, and noticing others my entire life. I knew I was too much, too emotional, too sensitive.
I even attended public school for the first time already with the understanding that I needed to fall in line in order to survive, that I needed to abandon myself to not be abandoned. Nobody had ever accepted my sensitivity or emotions, which felt so fundamental to who I was at the core, so I was forced to observe the world closely, take notes, and be aware enough to recognize that others’ comfort was much more valuable than mine, that people of a different gender, race, physical appearance, and emotional world were seen as more worthy.
I felt I had grown up trapped in a snow globe, on display for the whole world to see, if they ever felt so inclined to need a punching bag.It doesn’t sound so bad at first, since snow globes are seen as beautiful and delicate, but my snow globe was a cage, and it had been filled with a special type of snow that I liked to call shame.
At night, when the rest of the world fell asleep, I gladly took a chance to relax, finally feeling I had escaped the pressure to conform to standards of society. While everyone else dreamed, nobody noticed me, and so the snow settled around me gently like little mounds at the bottom of my globe, remaining undisturbed and tranquil until the following morning, when the world would violently shake me awake.
Shame would shoot up into the air suddenly, bursting all around me, colliding and endlessly falling all over me like an unwanted blanket.
Over the years, my globe kept getting filled with snow, and I kept seeing confirmation of what I had experienced my whole life over and over again. There was no relief, and the snowfall was relentless.
After twenty-eight years, I had no choice but to become an expert in shame.
Anytime someone would make a shaming comment towards me that they alleged was innocuous, I could call their bluff, since my body instinctively reacted on its own. In their biting remarks, I saw snow, and I felt the same bodily sensations that I’ve always felt, starting from when I was a little girl being told she needed to control her emotions. I may not have been as brilliant as my older brother, but I felt so strongly that there was no other person in this world who knew shame as well as me.
How could they, when it was so clear that they at least belonged?
Perhaps the only person who would understand me is Brandon, but I did not know what had happened to him, and I never would. In the end, he had just vanished.
When I was twenty-seven, I fell deeply in love with someone in a way that I never had before. Up until then, I had gruelingly taken on all of the so-called “constructive criticism” (it’s not shame! Stop being so sensitive) that had been doled out to me repeatedly. They claimed it wasn’t shame, and yet I had internalized many deeply ingrained thoughts and beliefs that would only ever serve to make me feel like I wasn’t enough.
For example, I genuinely believed the reason I had not found the love that I desired was because I simply had not worked on myself hard enough. So, I created a full life for myself, moving to a brand new city to chase my dreams. I made many friends throughout the years, and I cultivated many different hobbies. I finally had a decent salary, and I’d become as physically attractive as I could. I spent years in talk therapy, trying to work through my internal struggles, trying to become a healthier person that others would be proud to date.
Making a checklist of what I desired in a partner, I worked relentlessly to make sure I measured up. It was only fair, after all. I was not so cocky to think that I could ask for more than I could give.
I felt that I had put all my efforts into becoming an amazing person, that I had been forced to stretch and grow in ways nobody else I knew around me had. I felt ready for love. This time, I deserved it.
So when I found my last partner, I thought I’d hit the jackpot—all my suffering and hard work had been worth it. It could not be a mere coincidence that I had only now found my dream partner, who looked at me with love and treated me with tenderness, after I had put in all the work.
This is what others were talking about. This is what others had promised to me. It was worth it, after all. Filling up my globe with more snow had finally paid off in a way that I always dreamed.
Others commented about how happy we looked together and were shocked at how well I was treated.
It felt like my relationship was staunch proof that you get the love you deserve, that even if everybody up until then refuses to give you love, you can still achieve it or earn it through hard work.
I lived in a state of bliss, and I finally felt my life had come together. This was it. I had been chosen. I could finally belong.
Someone had come to break through my glass, melt the snow, and rescue me from my cage. I fell deeply with reckless abandon for this person, allowing myself to believe that it was finally safe to bare my soul and that upon doing so, he had decided that I did, in fact, belong. He had given me no sign to believe otherwise. So I trusted him, and slowly began to shift the running narratives in my head.
Perhaps there was nothing wrong with me after all. Maybe my mother was wrong. Maybe the world was. If he accepted me, maybe I wasn’t broken. Yes, I was still a deeply sensitive and emotional person at my core, but he knew that about me, and so far, he’d given me every reason to believe that that was okay.
However, one afternoon in September, he sat me down in my apartment, and pulled out the rug from under me.
I watched my entire world come crashing down, not only because I was losing someone that I loved deeply, but also because the culmination of my entire life, all the work I had put in, all the snow that I bore, that had chilled me to the bone—all the hyper vigilance, contorting and twisting as well as the self abandonment I had endured, none of it had meant anything at all.
Shame that I carried my whole life without complaint, that I rendered invisible to make others comfortable—none of it had led to anything good.
Without rain, there would be no flowers, but as I sat there alone in my apartment that day, I felt that my entire life had just been pouring rain.
I had always believed that enduring pain was worth it, but now I felt so much grief, thinking back to me at five years old, forcing myself to stop crying—to me at eleven, sobbing in bed, shaking, as I clutched my pillow—to me at thirteen, feeling invisible in her party dress at a school dance.
Flashback after flashback, memory after memory—my ex had given my globe the most violent shake at all, and I collapsed into my hands, sinking into my couch. What had all the pain been for?
Did I really deserve all this pain, just because I was born a sensitive and emotional woman, just because I had qualities to my personality and psyche that I could not control?
I had denied my fundamental self repeatedly and suffered more than anyone knew, hoping that the world would reward me eventually if I played by their rules.
But now, I realized that it had all been for nothing, that the game had been rigged from the start.
Afterwards, I continued life as normally as I could. When life had been cruel to me before, I always managed to survive. So I kept going. I cycled through the stages of grief, attempted to occupy my mind with hobbies, create new goals, and even reinvent myself. Without realizing, I started to operate again under the false belief that love could be earned or achieved. I internalized the flaws my ex pointed out in me, and I went back to work. On the surface, I thought I made progress, but months passed by, and I woke up everyday still feeling such immense grief.
I lost my appetite, and I began to lose sleep, becoming frustrated.
I had made the “mistake” of openly processing my breakup online, so while I had attracted some support and apparently helped others feel comfortable enough to feel their own emotions, the snow was piling on heavily, day after day.
Society, my family, my ex, and new random internet haters kept shaking me over and over again.
I thought the snowfall would never cease, that I’d never be able to rest. Even when the rest of the world was asleep, the shame continued bursting all around me, shooting up into the air like fireworks, with crackles so loud I could never fully dream.
I did not have enough money for therapy, so I turned to my own methods to process my emotions and tackle all the shame.
I knew I could no longer turn to my friends, because most people have a limited capacity, and yet when I explained what I was doing to help myself, I could tell that the people who cared about me were worried I was spiraling endlessly.
Nobody could understand why I was turning over my thoughts, processing my emotions, allowing myself to feel pain to the fullest extent.
It seemed like overkill to analyze my life. What good was it to revisit the past constantly?
People called me obsessed, mentally ill, and deranged. The way I was going about my healing seemed so wrong—but, that wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before.
Eventually, sadness transformed to anger. I let myself air out my most vindictive thoughts.
I was mad at the world, society, at everybody who had filled me with snow. I should have never had to bear all this pain simply because my true self was not acceptable by societal standards.
I never asked to be born this way. The dice had been rolled for me, and I had been chucked into an arena filled with bloodthirsty lions who wanted to devour me and made every effort to let me know.
No matter how much I tried, no matter my effort to play by their rules, they had made it clear that they would never allow me to belong.
I furiously vented on my laptop to a blank page. I simply could not write in my journal fast enough to keep up with my stream of consciousness. I was furious and burning with so much rage that my entire body felt like it was on fire.
I stabbed each key as I typed with vitriol, “It’s not worth it anymore. It never has been, and it never will.”
Descending further into fury, I wanted to scream into the void, break glass, or punch a punching bag—I felt overtaken with seething anger that was completely unlike me. But as the night went on, I began to run out of juice, coming to a stopping point eventually.
“It’s not worth it anymore. It never has been, and it never will.” I repeated to myself, this time without feelings of resentment.
Why had I endured so much for a world that would never accept me?
By then, my grief wasn’t about my ex—it was about losing myself. My pain was less about my partner’s rejection, but more about my own rejection of myself.
Many people after a breakup do not hesitate to jump back into dating, but I knew deep down that I had completely lost interest in all of that.
I could no longer connect to the version of me who loved reading teen romance novels—love, or whatever it was that my ex partner gave me, had betrayed me in the end.
I considered that anyone should be allowed to leave a relationship at any time, for any reason. I knew I could not control anyone else, nor did I want to. In the same vein, I could not force someone to choose me forever, nor would I ever feel right demanding it relentlessly.
Every human deserves the respect and autonomy to make choices that bring them fulfillment, even if that means leaving behind someone that loves them. So I concluded there would never be a way to cement my deep desire to be seen and understood in any one person.
It was not realistic to expect certainty from other people. In seeking safety with others, I had done myself a deep disservice.
My broken relationship revealed an important truth to me—that I can only ever rely on myself, because people are unpredictable.
I pondered over whether this was too sad of a conclusion to come to—if others would grimace if they heard me admit it out loud and try to change my mind.
It wasn’t that I was necessarily giving up on love, but I realized that it would never be the thing that could fulfill my desire to truly belong. There was no point in searching for validation from men, friends, likes, or reposts—all of that was temporary and could never offer me true safety.
The only way to feel safe was to rely on the one person who would never leave me: myself.
I thought back to when I had stood in front of the mirror that night after the middle school dance, wiping away my reflection repeatedly. No matter what, every time I opened my eyes, she persisted, blinking back at me. She never disappeared, even though I had buried her deep down.
Love, validation, or acceptance from someone else was not what I needed right now, and I could no longer see as much value in it due to its fragile nature. I needed something steadfast and unwavering. Something infinite and forever reliable. I needed her—the girl in the mirror. I knew that her full, unconditional acceptance of me would set me free from the cages of shame, even if everybody, including all the people I have ever loved, turned their backs on me tomorrow.
I stopped typing and sat in silence with this realization, feeling nothing but the slow rise and fall of my chest.
Eventually, my macbook screen went into sleep mode, the screen turning black. To my surprise, she was there again, in the reflection of my screen, blinking back at me. Even though I had forgotten to see her all these years, she had been patiently waiting for me to recognize her, without a single ounce of judgment. Looking back at the screen, I felt immensely guilty and braced myself for impact, expecting to feel a barrage of snow, an onslaught of shame to highlight how blind I shouldn’t have been. But instead, she shook her head, reached out to pat my shoulder, and pulled me in for a warm embrace.
As emotional as I am, I still value logic, and I had always agreed when Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result. What did I have to lose by doing something completely different?
It suddenly occurred to me that I no longer wished to be romantically loved— it was largely overrated. Instead, a new dream had taken its place, somewhere amongst all the rage and fury.
More than feeling validation from anyone, more than anything else I wanted in the world, I dreamt of feeling the happiness that could only come from being able to belong, unabashedly and unapologetically, to myself.
If I could finally dig my body out from underneath the avalanche, and choose to be myself, over and over, no matter how much snow is thrown at me—the warmth I feel from cultivating a fiery and unflinching love for myself, will be enough to melt everything, revealing a path forward that I never saw before.
The new me would no longer be a vessel for the discomfort of others, but a light, leading me, as well as others like Brandon, to the happiness we have always deserved. So many times in my past, I felt irreparably broken from carrying so much shame, that I would jokingly wish I could be sucked into space. Or I’d tell myself that if a zombie apocalypse broke out, I’d simply give up—I was just too tired. But back then I had never imagined a way out of my snow globe—I had never been able to break through the glass on my own.
Finally, I could see the cracks in the walls that had once confined me. They had always been there, but I was too blind to see while navigating blizzards. Now, all I had to do to start a new life was to simply have the courage to tap on the glass, let it all shatter, and allow everybody to see me for who I truly am—emotions, sensitivity, vulnerability and all. I had finally reached a pivotal point in my growth.
It was time to reclaim my life again.
To start over.
And god, this time, I could not wait to live.
I'd like to start by saying thank you. Thank you for pouring so much of yourself into this. It's one of the bravest things I've ever seen and I truly admire you for it. One of the people I look up to is Tyler, The Creator because of his ability to be himself so unapologetically. I'm always in awe of people like him. Being themselves seems like it's as easy as breathing. Like you, I spent all of my childhood and young adult life (I'm now 26) trying to shrink myself so as to blend in and be accepted. I have Muscular Dystrophy and I use a wheelchair so I've always felt the glare of others wherever I went. No matter how hard I tried I knew that I couldn't escape that glare. So I settled for "flying under the radar." A huge mistake. I now realize that if I'm myself, I can attract people's attention because of who I am and not because of my disability. It's so hard to unlearn the habits by which i used to shrink myself but like yourself, I've realized it's time to live life for myself, no one else. I see you and know that you're not alone in this journey.
That line you wrote about how you posting has helped others feel comfortable enough to feel their own emotions. I think that might be referencing me. I’m the one who made all those comments on your TikTok talking about how I was in a 3 month relationship like you and that seeing you sad has given me permission to mourn. With this, the devastation you have felt from your breakup, but also Brandon being made an outcast by his classmates at a young age, is incredibly relatable. Being made an outcast like him, what followed, and also the pain you felt after your breakup. That relatability is the destructive force. You wrote on TikTok that this will either heal or destroy you, and it’s certainly the latter. But nonetheless, all so beautifully written. You have talent, Sabrina. I hope you’re proud with the way you write. Because you should be. I don’t know how long you’ll be writing, but I am excited for whatever you come out with!