I was raised to sense what someone wanted me to be and be that kind of person. It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
It took me a long time not to judge myself through someone else's eyes.
Growing up, I just wanted to be like everyone else. I didn't value or understand the beauty in being different at the time in my life.
I was fortunate enough to have an upbringing that made me more accepting of who I am.
From a certain age, I sort of accepted myself for what I was. And although to other people it was like nothing ever goes right, I had a really nice attitude that I'd inherited from my parents, and especially from my dad.
I had to learn to dismiss people who would criticize me based on nothing, but I also had to learn not to believe the people who would compliment me and think I was great based on nothing. And that led me to have a very, very strong sense of myself and my strengths.
I was so determined not to pass on to my children what I perceived to be the faults of my upbringing.
For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath.
A lot of my personality was informed by feeling very different in the world I grew up in, feeling that I didn't fully belong, that my parents didn't belong.
Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.
I think at an early age I learned not to judge people.