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Julia Vasquez

Have you ever been singled out? Or felt like you didn’t belong in a world that seems to only cater to everyone else who is just not like you? If you answered yes, you are not alone. Most people actually feel just as lost as you are, I remember feeling lost. I felt like the world just didn’t cater to me, I felt like nobody admired me, felt like I was not attractive enough, not worthy enough for everyone surrounding me. Middle school, along with freshman year made me feel really insignificant due to how many people would spread negative rumors about me. Since I was not raised around people that had a lot of money, and I was taller than most people in my classes people have had the tendency to make fun of me for my off brand Payless shoes, hurtful names were always being bombarded in my ear. Middleschool hurt my self esteem a lot, I never learned how to defend myself or how to not believe what people say about me, I took practically everything that was said to me or about me to heart. I began to stay closed in, as a defense mechanism to the cruel ways I would be treated. I was closed in away from people against my own will, staying away from people and feeling targeted only made my self esteem worse. I doubted myself a lot, “why am I different in a “bad way” I would say to myself. I would get shot down by hurtful labels and terrible behavior. I would still have a little fight left in me to be myself though. It may come as a surprise to some people, the fact that what makes me feel like myself is being bubbly and energetic, due to this my comfort is in expressing my fashion sense and practicing self care. I admire confidence- so of course naturally I love making people feel confident.When I transitioned into highschool still with the hurt of how poorly I would be treated by students everyday in middle school, but walking through the halls of my highschool felt like a fresh restart. My confidence slowly came back, Freshman year was tough for me because I was not too close to people in my grade just yet. Highschool then began to drastically change for the better right along the beginning of the very first semester of Sophomore year, I felt like everything in my life was going right. I finally started to feel more comfortable in my own body, and in my style. I began to grow enough confidence to talk to more people in my classes. I began to have a group of friends I would tag along with and suddenly I did not feel lonely anymore. When I began to hangout with my group of friends, we would all go to school around the same time, eat lunch in the same room together, talk in a group chat all the time- of course we all had our own hidden obstacles in life, but when we were together the world and all of it’s negativity that has been thrown onto us suddenly became unrecognizable. True love can really distract you from anger and frustration, even my sadness got lifted. Suddenly I was the “class clown”, I was the funny, and pretty friend and everyone seemed like they finally admired me for my truest self. Highschool then became my safest space. The label of me being “too dependent” is correct in this case, never would I have thought that a friend group consisting of a few teenage girls would leave a mental scar so deep that the tiniest trauma response would just rip it right open again. We would ditch school parties to hang out together at the Pink Victoria secret in SOHO Manhattan, we would sneakily steal sodas from hotdog carts with our own tactics, we’ve even spoken about potentially getting jobs together. Everything was all very sudden, from barely any friends freshman year to people suddenly saying they “love me”, I quickly have fallen into this sinkhole of love bombing. I then quickly realized that my happiness stemmed solely from other people. Although I recognized my fragility I still continued to feed into this addiction of the fact that I had a change of power dynamic, a change of identity that was the total opposite of what I have been conditioned into thinking I am. Suddenly Julia was not “little” and “insignificant”, Julia was seen as a “head turner”, Julia was seen as “significant”.

But of course these highs of emotions eventually are bound to come down, I had a new interest in my life. Not only was I now getting attention from friends, that I cared about dearly, I was in a relationship. In highschool it seems as if people will only love you for as long as you are not “better” than them, insecurity and immaturity led to each “dear” friend that I had slowly dropping one by one. It felt like a repetitive heartbreak, an unexplainable heartbreak that nobody seemed to have the answers for. so I never questioned it. I never asked them why, I never got too emotionally invested, I just let them slowly form their delusional and mysterious alliance against me. The intensity of the friendship was at its highest peak around the beginning of sophomore year, and went down to its lowest in the span of only a few months. Life is incredibly unpredictable.

I suddenly felt bored, and alone with only me and my partner’s company, I felt like I had lost my worth. Passing by them in the hallway was heavily embarrassing, I felt like I was nothing more than a loser- it’s pretty funny to say but it’s true. I was uninformed on the faults in my own actions. I wish they had communicated to me.

I noticed from watching many self care and mental health videos in order to help me with my sorrow; that I was so reliant on people, eventually I began to be more emotionally aware. I slowly learned, a true strategy of staying happy is not being reliant on others. I took note that friends come and go. Everyone in this world has negative and positives that are not publicized, peoples actions are based off of how they feel and are not a reflection of you as an individual. Naturally animals gain knowledge from trauma in order to protect themselves from more physical or even mental harm, instead of me fixating on the hurt I would rather learn from it in a positive way. A reminder I have gotten better at is the lesson of remembering that you are not what people make you out to be, you are only what you identify yourself as- and you are only how you react to situations.

Being who you are is ever so changing with time, I was not the same person back then as I am now, and I was not any less of a person from peoples false perspectives of me. I am great how I am now. The best thing I can do is to have a kind and humble, patient soul. The lesson here is to realize how amazing you are for who you are, no matter who recognizes it or not. It is okay not to be deemed as “perfect” , nobody realistically is.