“Manasa! Nrithya!” I scream as I run down the sloping sidewalk of the bus loop, AirPods in hand.
I keep running, accidentally dropping and kicking my AirPods clear across the sidewalk, watching the case crash into the brick exterior of Coppell High School as both earbuds go flying. After I frantically pick them up, trying to shake off my embarrassing moment seen by hundreds of people, I casually stroll over to fellow Sidekick staffers Manasa Borra and Nrithya Mahesh.
With a look of exhaustion and a classic Manasa sigh, she looks up at me and says, “You are literally the antonym of elegance.” Laughing, I began filling them in on my first day of junior year.
As I look back, the end of my time in high school nearing closer and closer, I still let out a quiet chuckle thinking about that moment because Manasa and I had no idea just how right she was. And although she doesn’t remember it, that lovely little slogan is the truest description anyone has ever given me.
If you walk into The Sidekick’s newsroom on any given day, you will see about 20 hard-working people all clacking away on their laptops and iPads. However, as you will quickly learn, it’s hard to miss me – strutting about the room checking up on column writers, brainstorming ideas, inventing random words, coming up with the most nonsensical nicknames for everyone in the room and always one of the loudest (though I refer to this as a product of my New Jersey roots).
But I can’t help it; it’s just who I am. However, I was not always like this.
Though I’ve mentioned it in my columns many times, for much of my life I lacked the ability to thoroughly express myself the way I wanted to. Overcome by my fear of looking stupid or uncool and, ultimately, being judged, I dimmed my personality, becoming a shy, nervous and anxious person, rather than the loud and flamboyant person I am today.
While I am grateful that I could finally embrace myself, I am starting to realize I am not the lone person experiencing this.
Looking around CHS with a cursory glance, everyone seems the same: relaxed, soft-spoken, intelligent and ‘normal.’ Yet, when I am alone with these people, it is almost as if I am with a completely different person, being struck by bursts of energy. Everyone is wacky in their own unique way, yet in public, they refuse to express it.
Hushes shroud the energy when someone gets too loud in public for fear some passerby will judge their conversation. Awkward glances are exchanged and cheeks turn bright red when the classroom gets too quiet in the middle of a story. These experiences have become commonplace at CHS, and with such a diverse student population, some of it may be culturally normal, such as the self-imposed silence in Asian cultures. However, they shouldn’t be. With all the talk of what should and shouldn’t be normalized I say this: normalize being abnormal.
Oftentimes, I watch amazing people dim themselves, their voices to be more socially acceptable yet if we could all just wake up and realize that each of us carries a little piece of “weirdness” with us, we would be a lot happier. Then, something as simple as being your authentic self would not be so stigmatized.
However, I know all of us have heard this lecture a million times in many Disney coming-of-age movies, so let me try a different stance: when we dim ourselves to fit what society decides is acceptable, not only do we harm that inner version of ourselves, but we contribute to the death of society.
Without true self-expression, we do not see the advancement of culture, the creation of art or the individualization of the self. Everyone becomes the exact same and we look to others to do what we can not: create and inspire. But there would be no Mona Lisa without Leonardo da Vinci, no Apple without Steve Jobs and no “Purple Rain” without Prince. If any of these people listened when everyone else judged them and called them weird, then the world would have lost out on some of the best technology and pieces of culture we have ever seen.
If I continued quieting myself, I know I would have regretted it, becoming a miserable person. I love who I am now; I love my loudness and every time someone tells me to quiet down, it is just a reminder to choose to live the way I want, free of the burdens that shackled me into silence before.
If there is one message I want to hit the hardest in my columns, it is this: Be bold. Be loud. Be you. Because that’s all we need you to be.
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