Yesterday I was having a conversation with my therapist about boundaries, about the way that I compromise myself to avoid the threat of abandonment, and how I could maybe stop doing that.
This talk was a part of an ongoing conversation between us, but yesterday’s session was definitely a turning point. She asked me to set an example of a recent way in which I’ve neglected my own values in pursuit of others’ approval. I thought immediately of a certain friend, who we’ll call M.
M. is very pretty. M. is “It Girl” material. M. has flawless skin, femme fatale style, and a quick tongue. M. is not what anyone would describe as a “nice” girl. M. is magnetic, and M. likes to put people down, she finds it funny, and she’s terribly good at it. When I met M, I thought she was the coolest girl in the world. Like with many ‘cool’ girls that I’ve met in the past, I immediately adjusted my behavior to blend in with hers. She liked snark? I’d meet her on her level. I’d join in on the judging, the teasing, and she would laugh, and I would feel a bit smaller, not really knowing how or where to place the feeling of shame that washed over me, the feeling that perhaps I’d just lost something.
This pattern is a trend of mine, and it’s not exclusive to women, but simply to people who I’ve for some reason internally categorized as “cool” — a thing that I’ve never felt myself to be, a title I’ve been chasing since I was very young and decidedly uncool, feeling lonely and unincluded at recess on a Los Angeles playground.
Since I was young, I’ve gravitated toward one particular person at a time, a ‘cool’ kid I could hide behind. In elementary school it was K., in high school it was T., after that it was S., then a different T., then a different S., etc, etc…When K., the first cool girl adopted me, I left behind my previous best friend so quickly, distancing myself from her radius as K. teased her, and I joined in. My original friend asked me, “I don’t understand, is it because I don’t curse?” I’m not sure what I replied, but I’m sure it wasn’t kind. I was now taking notes from the people who I wanted to be! Their parents had money and fancy houses, they had the coolest toys and designer backpacks! Never mind that I didn’t curse, either, now I did! Never mind that I swore I’d never drink nor smoke — I would if they did! I’m not proud of this, of course. I’m only trying to be honest about how far back this self-betrayal had gone.
Fast forward to the present day. I’m not nearly as influenceable as I once was, but I’m still susceptible to certain backslides, only now their repercussions are more immediate. I recently phoned my mother after leaving a hang out with M., and I told her ‘I think I have to stop hanging out with her.’ to which my mother asked “Why?”
“It’s just that every time we hang out, I feel this subtle anxiety growing and growing. I feel more and more anxious the more that I’m with her.”
Freya India recently posted an incredible piece titled “Maybe You’re Not Anxiously Attached.” I highly recommend giving it a read as it’s got much more wisdom than what I’m about to reference here. For brevity’s purpose, here’s the quote that stood out to me the most—
“Less analysing; more action. Self-respect before self-diagnosis. Don’t accept something casual if you want something serious. Don’t waste time on people who have made it clear they don’t care. Don’t sit ruminating about what’s wrong with you. Sometimes you need to get out. And find someone who doesn’t make you feel unwell.”
I used to think that the anxiety that I felt around certain people was simply a cause of my inability to be cool, my internal neurosis, my failure to stand strong. Recently, I’m looking at this discomfort as a clue. I realized that the relationships that cause me the most anxiety are the ones in which I feel the need to pretend to be someone that I’m not. Of course I’d feel anxious after spending hours trying to fit in with a person whose very temperament contradicts my internal values! The body indeed keeps the score, and it cannot stand the taste of betrayal. To know who you are, to know who you want to be, and then to spend significant chunks of time pretending to be something else entirely — that is a surefire recipe for discord.
Speaking to my therapist, I told her that the next major step for my growth would have to be the ability to get comfortable with the idea of people perceiving me as weird. I’ll have to get cozy donning the title that I’ve been trying to run from my entire life. The truth is, I am a little weird, if we’re measuring against the current trend for what it means to be “cool” — because in truth, the current TikTok/Pinterest-ification of “coolness” is simply hollow, and I am not. I am easily hurt, I am wholly emotional, I am full of earnest, I long for love and I’ve never truly learned how to hide that. More than anything, I desire to be honest, to be honest about my wanting and my hurting and my loving, to be honest about the things that move me, to never, ever again have to ‘play it cool’ to keep love. In fact, I think a love you have to downplay your excitement in order to keep is not really love at all — it’s a performance.
I think of all the people in the world who are aspiring to be cool, who are sitting on their hands or balling up their fists when all they really want to do is reach out to hold and be held. The thought makes me sad. I have never felt more alone than when I am surrounded by my ‘cool’ friends, because we know that ‘coolness’ is conditional, and the condition of it is that you be as jaded and detached as possible, that you let nothing affect you, that you talk more about what you are doing than what you are truly feeling, that you never let anyone know you at all. Again, it is sad. It makes me sad, and it makes me regret all the years I spent chasing such a hollow, darkened room.
It feels a bit silly that I’m only now learning to embody the lesson that every movie made between from 80s to the early 2000s tried to teach me, but I am an experiential learner, and every revelation that’s ever stuck within me has been one that I have come to on my own. Little by little, I see the mask of the false self being chipped away at all around me, and what’s being revealed is a person I am proud of.
At the end of our session yesterday, my therapist and I decided that I would need to elect a new judge. Not the old version, which was always based on other people and their validation, but one that rules entirely based on my own values of the person that I am and that I want to be. I told her that I want to be honest, grateful, kind, and speak/act from a place that has no motivation to do harm to another.
These qualities, for me, are the new ‘cool.’ To be cool is to be authentic. To be cool is to give honestly of myself. To be cool is to admit that I want to be loved, to be cool is to strive to give the same love I seek. To be cool is to be vulnerable. To be cool is to be silly, to be childlike in wonder. To be cool is to pick up the people that others may try to put down. To be cool is to look for our common humanity. To be cool is to honor the humanity within myself, and the humanity within the other. To be cool is to be driven and attracted by soul— not flesh, not fashion. To be cool is to know what I will not allow, and to know that I deserve to be surrounded by love. To be cool is to learn to leave the other before I begin to leave myself.
Lots of love, as always,
jomé ♡
PS: Hello, hi! Back sooner than I thought :)
Update: I am working on my first poetry collection! It’s called “Marrow” and I can’t wait to share it with you ♡
In the meantime, here are some things that have struck me recently that you might like to read:
Wow… I have never related to anything more. I was just recently talking to my therapist about my pattern of attaching myself to the dominant ‘cool’ girl. Like you, I’ve had many since childhood. I was also tortured by anxiety and constant fear of abandonment, of not being enough, of being too ‘weird’ (neurodivergent clue #1). I allowed these cool girls to walk all over me because I assumed I was defective, and therefore deserved it. There’s nothing like the feeling of stepping into your authentic self and realizing that all the while, it wasn’t because there is something wrong with you, but that your gut was trying to warn you about this relationship.
I always enjoy your writing; so elegant, yet so real.