Comparing myself to others is something I’ve always been told not to do, yet somehow it seems instinctual to think about how I wish nothing more than to have certain attributes of other people. I wish I was as skinny as the girl I pass on the way to class, as funny as someone the girl in my anthro class, as interesting as the girl who I see on Instagram. Confidence has never been my strong suit, and when I compare myself to others it becomes even worse.
I can’t be the only person who dreads being asked to “tell me about yourself.” What is there to tell? What do I say that makes me sound interesting? And when I hang out with my friends I wonder how we are friends. Am I that intriguing that they can stand to eat lunch with me for 30 minutes? And I don’t even want to talk about my self-doubt and plummeting confidence levels when I’m around a guy that I like. However, when I think about the question I’ve been asking myself for so long, “what makes me special?”, has a simpler answer than I thought. Everything. There is no one out there like me. Sure, there are people who are better than me at just about everything I do, but there’s no one out there who is participating in the exact combination of things that I do, no one has a mind that functions exactly like mine, not everyone shares my taste in music, or has my same ambitions and life goals. That’s what makes me special. Everything that drives me and motivates me, everything that makes up who I am. So yeah, I’m going to doubt myself, I’m going to ask what I could be doing better, but then I’ll remember that it doesn’t matter. I am who I am and I’m coming to grips with that. I’m learning to love who I am and I know that those who care about me do too.