I’ve been spending a lot of time with myself over the last few months.
You’re probably thinking, “We know. You talk about it every other post,” which is true to an extent, but this time it’s less about growing comfortable and more about what I have learned.
This year — and yes, I’m including 2025 — has been incredibly eye-opening. I realized in my effort to drown out the agony in my mind, I also drowned out quintessential parts of myself.
Plenty of people have told me that I am too passive or “don’t have a backbone.” In hindsight I can recognize those moments, but at the same time that has never been the kind of person I am.
I just don’t think I’ve had the energy to care about confrontation.
When I was little I was more assertive and opinionated that I am now and I had more agency in my life but also polite and courteous. I think that changed around fifth grade when I started to realize that the people I surrounded myself with were more inclined to stick around when I was a lesser version of myself.
Most of the friendships I made earlier on in life didn’t last longer than a few years due to kids moving away. If someone can help and figure out why I gravitate toward temporary people please let me know because my childhood best friends – except one – from the ages of five to 10 either left my school or left the state.
As you can imagine, losing a person in my life year after year took a toll on me. I am an only child so if I didn’t make friends I was going to be alone in the world and it probably didn’t help that up until middle school I’m pretty sure I was one of three mixed kids in a school of all white people.
When you’re stuck in a postion of picking between “stick it out” or “settle down” at the age of 10, you’re more than likely going to pick “settle down” and accept whatever is right in front of you. The day I made that choice dominoed into who I am today – or at least who I am perceived to be today.
It’s really easy to make and maintain friends when you aren’t more than they expect you to be. If they think of you as naive or helpless or unassuming then you can never be more than that.
I know I can be quiet in certain settings but I don’t know why people think that means I need to be “broken out of my shell” or coached into society. I’m not fucking 10 anymore. It’s more a matter of survival. Don’t put your cards on the table until you know it’s safe to open up. It’s much easier to ease into a relationship than it is to jump in head first – I would know, a majority of my failed relationships were ones that jumped the gun.
The combination of losing friends, trying to assimilate and failing, and the beginning of my mental health journey didn’t really give me the best landscape of having a “backbone.” Those were my formative years and dimming myself down is what led helped me skate by with some semblance of community. And besides if I was more focused on my studies and extracurriculars and everything else then at least I’d have something to show for it in the end, right?
Wrong.
Well not totally because – again – hindsight is 2020, but when I graduated high school I felt like a failure.
A failure with low self-esteem, more college rejections than acceptions, a new bipolar diagnosis, more friends I didn’t mesh with than ones I did, trauma from the pandemic, and a feeling that I would be stuck in this state forever.
I was having a pretty big identity crisis because I had never stopped doing anything to really think about who I was and what I wanted now that my supposed dreams had been crushed. This led me to spend about three years going on and then off and then back on and then back off my meds and trying to latch on to every and anyone that would let me. I simultaneously put myself too much out there and not enough and up until the last few months I remembered who the fuck I actually am.
And I do think a big part of that is because I am actually taking my mood stabilizers and all the other prescriptions consistently but it’s also because I have had time to sit with myself and ignore the outside noise. I’ve checked back in to who I am.
I’ve noticed myself become reinvigorated with a sense of urgency and confidence, one that I haven’t felt in a very long time. I don’t totally know who I am because it’s my 20s and that how this time of everyone’s life goes – and also the rest tbh – but at the same time I have been reminded of the Morgan that makes shit happen. The Morgan that doesn’t take a backseat in her own life for the sake of others.
Compassion is necessary for life, but so is being recognizable to yourself.
I’m okay if people view me as quiet and timid because I know in my heart and soul that is not who I am. And if I were to give anyone reading this any advice:
Don’t forget to empathic but also don’t allow other’s expectations of you to influence your own. You are your own person and sometimes you need time to really sit down and figure out what you believe in, what you want, and who you want to surround yourself with.
I know that I will probably be back talking about “finding myself in my 20s” again but I believe that is the transparency we need right now. Everyone is so obsessed with trying to play a part that authenticity is hard to find.
Just because the other voices in the room are louder than yours, it doesn’t mean that yours is invaluable.