Background
When I was little I was stamped as the crazy child. The one who was bouncing off the walls with excitement and curiosity. The young girl who wanted to be included in everything and would say almost anything out of pure fearlessness. Somewhere in the grey of childhood that sparkle slowly was diminished by everyone else’s opinions. I gradually became more shut off and closed off from everyone around me. The word “sorry” leaving my mouth every other moment to cushion the fact that I was no longer myself, I was the living embodiment of what everyone around me told me was socially acceptable and required.
El Diablo:
I’m sure a lot of people can relate to being bullied as a kid, and if you haven’t well I am incredibly happy for you.
Reflecting on the Past
I think it’s kind of sad now, looking back, that I can’t even remember why people called me “El Diablo”. I find it nauseating that I once let people dictate the kind of person I was outwardly. I find it heartbreaking that through this process of conforming on the outside, I lost sight of who I was internally.
If I could go back in time I would tell my younger self to tell everyone to fuck off. I know that’s not very lady-like, but that’s truly how I feel about everyone else’s opinions of me. I was too loud so I had to take my volume down ten notches. I asked too many questions which my peers deemed an insufficient use of their time, so I stopped. I was told that my Asian features were not desirable and that I was a solid seven and I would be nothing more then that in my existence. As you can imagine, young, impressionable me believed every word they said. I was determined to change everything about myself to mitigate the awful qualities people said I had.
Mentally, I think that really effected me. I was in a constant state of trying to be someone else, so it became difficult for me to figure out who I was and what I wanted. It’s the classic cliché of “forgetting your roots”.
Obviously, people change overtime and I can confidently say that I am working through all of the childhood trauma and am becoming more in touch with who I am as a person. Not knowing and being unsure of yourself 24/7 is an absurd way to live your life. Impressing those around you is unrealistic, the only person you can successfully impress is yourself. And there’s no way of doing so until you understand what your goals are and what you want your living message to be.
As a child I wanted my living impression to be “desirable”. And no, not only romantically, but also platonically. Through self reflection, it’s clear to me now that because I was so enamored with pleasing others it became my whole identity. I went from not caring what anyone thought of me to caring about every minuscule thing people were saying about me. Truthfully, it was insanely toxic for a young girl.
But as a grown woman I can say that it is equally as toxic but now since I’ve been through it I know how to alleviate some of the more negative feeling that rise with the memory. I tell myself that I was young and I didn’t know any better. I tell myself that it’s good it happened to me because now it won’t happen to those around me, at least not without a conscious effort on my part to stop it. I tell myself that the fact that I was able to recover is beautiful and very resilient of me. It shows me that there was at least an ounce of “El Diablo” left and that’s all I really need to continue.
What My Regret Looks Like
Regret is a powerful emotion. It invokes past emotions, typically negative and forces us to relive them and learn from them. If I could say anything about my “biggest” regret I just shared with you, I think it would be that regretting is not the important part. It’s the growth that happens after the regret. I regret letting other’s opinions dictate how I lived my life, but that’s in the past and all I can do is move on. Letting your regrets define who you are as a person is just as bad as the initial regret. In fact, it will probably end up being one of your regrets later on in life if you proceed down that road.
Be mindful of yourself and your values and don’t let anyone make you feel as if you must stray from them.
Juliette M. Faber 