"Be as you wish to seem."
Who said this? Oprah Winfrey? Gordon Ramsey? Bear Bryant? The insightful and quotable philosopher, Socrates, actually spoke these words into existence. Since I started college a few years ago, I've taken this mantra and ran with it.
Like most people, I aimed to come to college with the mindset that I was going to reinvent myself. I came to college with my guard up as if I was a castle and I had built a moat around myself to keep people at a distance. I didn't want to let people in. I was afraid to return to that old Jerome who was ruthlessly and endlessly bullied throughout grade school. So, I decided to change basically everything about myself.
During my senior year of high school, I began to create this persona of who I wanted to be. I wanted to be able to command attention as soon as I stepped into a room. I wanted people to hang onto every word I said. I wanted to be liked by people. I'd just say mean comments in order to get a laugh from people. In turn, it worked. It got to the point where my friends, with my permission, created T-shirts that read, "personally victimized by Jerome Cargill. At the time, I loved it because I got the positive attention that I was seeking to get, and it got people talking. Friends still wear the shirt to this day. Who knew that I would take that t-shirt and spin it into a cautionary tale.
Cut to my freshman year of college. People were always asking me, "How is Alabama? Do you love it? Are you adjusting?"
I would frame my answer to be vague and a bit truthful. I'd tell them that I'm enjoying myself, but it is a huge adjustment. I wanted to start over and be a new person. My entire state of mind revolved around being Jerome 2.0.
Unfortunately, I made a few mishaps trying to maintain being that person. I subconsciously began this habit of being condescending, vicious, arrogant and rude in order to gain a certain level of respect from people. If someone looked bad, I would immediately make a critique. If a person said something that didn't sit well with me, I'd call them out in front of people. If there was something I wanted to discuss, which was usually ripping someone to shreds, I'd wait for someone to bring it up just so I could have my two cents to give.
I remember one day in my English 101 class, the professor asked us to give one nickname that your friends would use to describe you. You know what fell out of my mouth? The word "plastic." PLASTIC. PLAS-TIC. When asked why, I put my chin up, cleared my throat and said, "Well, my friends made the joke that I'm a lot like Regina George because I say whatever I want. And if you didn't like what I had to say, I didn't care."
Residents in my dorm were asking me for advice because "no one else is as honest as you, Jerome." People would hang on to every word I had to say, but it was only to see how insulting I could be. Being this shell of a person was difficult to bare. I would constantly wonder, "Why am I so mean? Who am I trying to impress? It's not fun being mean. I became the person I truly despised. I became the type of people who bullied me."
So, I've been working to reinvent myself and finding my true self. I found that being friendly and kind and actually making people feel good about themselves is the best way to find positive people to surround myself with. I realized that being this shrewd, heartless viper may bring in temporary friends; but, I also learned that those people are only liking the manufactured version of me. Some people thought I was faking trying to be a nice person, but it was actually just learning that being decent isn't an awful characteristic.
"Be as you wish to seem," I always think. I wanted to be revered, admired, liked. I was just going about it the wrong way. Being shallow and mean gets you nowhere. You'll end up being bitter, lonely and frightened. Don't go into life trying to be someone else. Be your authentic self. I truly do believe that everyone is good deep down inside. A lot of us are caught up in trying to impress someone else or trying to "fit in." In turn, some of us act out in order to win an award to see who can be the meanest.
As cheesy as it sounds: be yourself, everyone else is taken. I tried to be like Heather Chandler and ended up learning that I would've been a lot happier if I had just been Jerome Cargill.
