There is always going to be a person who is just better than you at something. We have heard it, seen it, and experienced it firsthand our entire lives. There is that person who is involved in more clubs, that guy who seems more passionate and more sure about their future goals, or that girl who can basically tell her life story to a complete stranger without being the socially awkward turtle that basically would rather shut her mouth than let someone know what she is actually thinking.

We have all been there, haven't we? Why couldn't be that better person?

Then why is it that sometimes I feel alone in this battle between accepting who I am and believing I am not good enough to go any further?

When I was younger, I was the type of person who didn't tell anyone what type of religion that my family practiced because I was worried about being judged. What girl wants to tell everyone in her Catholic school that she wasn't like the rest of them? For example, at Ash Wednesday Mass during school, I saw proud people going around school with their ashes on their forehead and proclaiming how proud they were in their beliefs. But there I was, petrified to express my own.

Why is it so hard to be different? Why are we sometimes terrified to shout out "This is who I am. Accept it or leave it"?

I cannot tell you how many times where I would have a conversation with someone, waiting to get a gauge on how they think I should feel about the topic and just go with their opinion. Did it matter if I actually felt that way? Of course! But I just wanted to feel as if I wasn't wrong...if I wasn't different.

But writing this now, I type the words to realize that I am basically lying to myself if I think that fitting in is the best way to live. Being quiet and not expressing who I am is not who I really want to be. I want to be goofy and not be afraid to tell jokes, just because people might not think they are funny. I want to be nerdy and say some irrelevant fact about the color pink in the middle of the conversation.

In the past couple months, I realized that people don't really see when they look at me. And that's not even their fault. I created this barrier so tall and heavy, expecting someone to break down my walls when I had a perfectly good door from my side that I could've let people in.

Basically, I am trying to say that different can be scary. Everybody hates change. But if we don't give ourselves the opportunity to grow with this difference, we lose the chance at learning about others around us and at keeping true to ourselves. What good are we if we decide that we aren't good enough?