Discover yourself
Keep quiet, don't talk nonsense. Stop trying to draw attention to yourself. Stop creating drama out of anything. Women complicate everything! Shame on that woman, she looks like a whore. Where are you going dressed like that? She looks like a whore! She looks like a nun! That's a young girl's thing, it doesn't look good at your age. You're past the age of doing things like that. Carpentry, toolbox, car repair? That's a man's job. They'll think you're gay. Go and put some make-up on, you're not a child to walk around with a clean face. Jesus, how do you have the guts to wear such unfashionable clothes?!
To live is to fight to uncover yourself. And this struggle is all the harder the further away from normality you discover yourself to be. And, let's face it, who's normal? After spending your childhood and adolescence shaping your personality to meet the expectations of your parents and teachers, you finally reach adulthood and, if you're lucky, financial independence. Now it's time to spread your wings, isn't it? But then comes the search for a partner who values you, the demands regarding your appearance and attitude in your professional environment, the expectations of your niche on social media, the advertising that dictates tastes and dreams... And you lose yourself once again. You feel frustrated, dissatisfied, your energy drained, and you don't even know why. Your day-to-day life is so stressful that you end up adapting to other people's expectations in order to be loved and reduce friction.
Okay. After so much effort, you can now tell yourself that you are loved and respected, or at least that's what those around you make you believe. But is it really you who is loved, or a low-quality avatar of you who is out there living your life? It's hard to know unless you make the supreme effort to ignore other people's expectations and find out what it is that you like. And, make no mistake, I'm not talking about sexual choices, that's just one part of it. Discovering yourself is much more than coming out of the closet.
All this rambling was sparked by an article published by UOL in February 2021 that I've just stumbled across by chance, two and a half years after it was published. It talks about tattooed old women. No, that's not my problem, I love my skin just the way it is and I have no desire to get tattoos. But I find myself admiring the women portrayed in the article, who fight against the expectations of society and their families to take on the image and the life they love. In this article, there is one photo in particular that makes me envious. In it, a sexagenarian with light blue hair and tattooed skin wags her finger at the reader of the article. "Fuck your rules, dear reader," she seems to be saying.
This photo reminds me that in everyone's life there is more than one opportunity for discovery and rebirth. Traditionally, these opportunities occur in adolescence and retirement, but they can vary from one person to the next. I feel like the Australian Max Peters who says he bitterly regrets having seen the Bitcoin wave coming and not having joined in when there was time. My wave of self-discovery is passing out there in the surf, and I have to swim to catch it, or else I'll spend the rest of my life having to conform to other people's expectations. But until I do, please give me a like. kkkkk!
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