People need people. That was told to me every time I said I didn’t want to attend a ceremony or function. It’s not that I don’t like people, I don’t like the opinions that people have about my life.

We are all different people with our own thoughts, opinions, experiences and expectations. It think it would be impossible to find someone with the same ideology in every aspect of life. Given that there are people who learn to love each others differences and are happy.

At any stage of my life, the one statement that I have constantly heard was “What will people think?”. I was never an extremely bright student neither was I a great athlete. There were people always commenting on the way I was. There was some invisible standards that were set and I never could match up to them. When I think I have made it the standards change again.

The society I live in has degraded me on the way I look because I do not match the standards of “normal” beauty. They have pointed fingers at me calling me greedy or money minded when all I did was strive to be better. They have influenced so many life altering decisions in my family because my parents had to stay true to the society standards. Sometimes even forgetting their love for me. I hate parts of my life and I hate myself more for the fact that I did not have the courage to fight against it and just gave in.

This society is what has caused me to compartmentalize my emotions. I have given up on my happiness and in some cases my sanity to meet these standards and all I got for it was pain. I am not sure who made these standards cause I see that most all people are like me. They are crushed by society’s expectations. They are empty.

There are days I feel empty too. But, now I have learnt one thing, no matter what I can’t please anybody. All I can do is fight for a little bit of happiness for myself. I am not going to keep scratching at things that scar me. I am going to let it go. I am going to hold on to the few dreams that I have and work towards that. Let the society sneer and rebuke at me. I will still keep moving forward.

I maybe broken but I have not fallen apart. My scars are witness to the battles I survived. Cheers to the survival in the battles before and the ones yet to come.