The Pressure to Appeal to Someone - Where does it come from?

This is something that I have had to deal with for most of my life. Whether it be in school, parties, boujee social events, weddings etc, often times I felt the need to impress that particular king or queen that ruled whatever scene I was in. It was not a pleasant ride. It came with heartbreak, disappointment, and rejection. I never felt like an equal to these kings and queens.



Whenever I want to talk about something that I have been going through most of my life, I often don't know where to start.

My self esteem decreased as I got older. Especially after I came back from India after 3 years of living with my grandparents and entered the second grade, that's when I really started to feel these new feelings called "being left out", "feeling like shit" , "being the weakest link in he room" (well I have left that even before I entered the second grade). But you get the point, it was a culmination of new emotions that I never experienced and never asked to experience. It just happened. Well why did it happen?

No, seriously, why? Let's try to unpack this a little bit. Most of the people reading this blog do not know me personally and I want to write this blog post in a way that they can also understand the scope of what I went through growing up. But, yeah, let's unpack this. Why did this happen? Why did I go through the emotions I went through after entering the second grade? What was the dynamic in my classrooms between myself , my classmates, and my teachers? How did this feeling translate into other areas of my life? How did this start to get fucking intense? What was my first memory of feeling left out and not belonging?

That's a fuck ton of questions to think about and ponder, but I think it is necessary in order to delve into the internal workings, emotions, thoughts, and aftermaths that come from the pressure to appeal to that particular king or queen. I don't know why exactly it happened. I think it was a big culture shock after I came back from India. Kids here seemed to be more free to express themselves than back in India. With that also came a lot of complexities, like "who is the coolest person in the classroom?", "who would I be able to make friends with?","Is there anyone I can be friends with?",  and "Will people like me?" I've never really had to do this when I was going to school in India. In India, I was more concerned with appeasing the teacher so he/she wouldn't punish me than I was concerned with making friends. I was always around tons of family members when I was not in school so having friends in school did not seem a big concern to me. When I came back, it felt shocking to not be around my extended family and just be back with my parents and my brother. I lived in a quiet suburbia with just my parents and brother, and we were not necessarily popular within the social events and parties we would attend. It was back in India where I felt more important and like a princess (I never felt entitled) than I did when I first came back to America.

Anyway, getting back to the point. Yeah, going back to school, I was very shaken by the environment because I was so sensitive to all of the nuances in the classroom but more to the fact that I sensed a type of hostility from my classmates. I was so shaken that I cried on my first day of school. It was awful. Instead of attending to my sensitivities and trying to hear me out, my teacher made me feel like it was my fault for acting how I was, and no classmate seemed to have any compassion for me. I felt they thought I was the weakest link because I cried often in my first days of second grade. I think they were put off by the fact that I felt too much. I don't know, but it was bad. So school became more of  a place to survive than to a place to actually get an education.

I hated the fact that I was not very welcomed by my classmates and called out by my teacher for being different. I hated the fact that I had to be around these kids whose vibes I hated in the first place but was conditioned to think that I was supposed to be like them. If I were like them, then I would be of value. If I wanted to be of value, I had to appeal to and be friends with the most popular people in the room. And yeah, that leads to a fuck ton of problems.

I'm sorry that this post is fucking long, but this is this a very important thing to me. But yeah, that desire to appeal to a popular person within any social environment leads to so many problems. Trust me, there are more cons than pros when we have that wish. One big problem was that the so-called queen/king of the scene and myself were usually so fundamentally different from each other. Let me explain why I think this is the case:

1) I am a very observant empath. I can't help but notice everything that is going on in my surrounding and be deeply affected by this and while they are usually not empaths. Every conversation has to revolve around them and/or things that interest them, and they usually could care less about what other people have to say.

2) Most decent people have the capacity to hold space for other people to be vulnerable and honest with themselves, but with these people it's a completely different story. They usually do not have the capacity to hold space for others because they are so invested in themselves and people that live up to their standards. If you are not deemed worthy in their eyes, they would rather not talk to you. In fact, talking to you, to them, means dishonoring the idea that they are the status quo. Noticed how I said 'idea' and not 'fact'. The people around them are usually conditioned to see them as and/or mold them to be the status quo, but it doesn't mean they are the status quo. Others may not make them out to be such a huge deal. They may not even care about that person's so-called prestige. They could have more important issues to worry about. They might even find the hype behind this particular person very silly and immature.





So, what do we do about this? What happens when we are faced with this situation?

I mean I don't know where to start. I can't come up with a fixed set of advice that would work for everybody, but I hope these little tid-bits of wisdom helps.

1) These so-called "kings" and "queens" are human just like you. It sounds so fucking cliche, but it's a fact. They ARE human beings. They make mistakes just like you. They put their pants on one leg at a time. They go to the bathroom just like you. They have insecurities and troubles going on in their lives even though it doesn't look like it.

2) This is so fucking important and I really can't emphasize this enough. THE DEEPLY NEGATIVE FEELINGS THAT WE HAVE WHEN WE ARE AROUND PEOPLE LIKE THEM ARE VALID. You can feel something is off about them and that they are inherently bad, even if others can't see that. That's because THEY REALLY ARE BAD PEOPLE!

3) Even if you know they are human beings just like you, I really don't recommend being friends or acquaintances with these people at all. And please refrain from talking to them if you don't have to, and even distance yourselves from them if possible. You are way too good to be interacting with the likes of them.

4) The fact that you are able to feel these people's negative energy at such a deep level and no one else seems to be feeling the same doesn't mean you are a weak person for feeling how you feel. Nor does it mean that you deserve to be isolated because of how you feel. It just means that you have a very strong intuition and a deeper sensitivity than most people. In fact the negative energies that you feel from these people say more about them than it does about you. There is definitely a deep, grim darkness that is lurking inside them that nobody else in that social circle seems to notice. There is nobody calling these people out on their shit. That's seems like a very strong thing to say, but it's true. The reality of being around these people, seeing anything on them via Internet, and/or hearing other people praise them is no joke at all. It's a very exhausting thing to deal with.

No, I'm serious. It really is NO JOKE!! These people don't play games. They are very committed to the fucked-up system that they live up to. They are very committed to keeping the system running as fast and as rampant as it usually does. Like, WTF?! It's really annoying. Actually ....... no, it's more than annoying. It's harmful, toxic, and just plain unhealthy. And I don't understand the hype around these types of systems and the people who live up to it. When these types of people were finally fully done playing a role in my life, I realized that these MOFOs never had anything to offer at all......absolutely nothing of valid use and importance. Without the system that they have lived up to for so long, they are very incompetent human beings that don't know how to live a life outside the system. And that can lead to great pain and devastation......just as much if not more than the pain that people who have been hurt by these systems have gone through.

And the crazy thing is(this is inspired from this YouTube video I watched, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1kTE9Ej5Yg) ...... we are trained to want to be in those situations, we are trained to want to interact with those people, we are trained to want to be like those people.



Why? Because these people and the systems they perpetuate are seen as the ideal. People want to be the ideal because being the ideal gets you on top of the social ladder. It's all a matter of survival, my loves.

Don't fit in the status quo? Feel miserable about yourself? Being put down by others for being your TRUE self? Then, look no further and appeal to a popular person and/or people near you. B/c what's more important than a bunch of people, who could care less about you, validating your existence?



I mean. What? Seriously, what? OK, I don't even know where to go from here. That whole notion is so fucked up. It's exhausting AF. The people who we are often trying to appeal to,besides their status and supposed appeal, really do not have anything substantial to offer. They really don't. They are usually extremely shallow bitches, and we want to live up to them? We want to be friends with them?
These people are heralded by mainstream culture, everybody seems to love them, everybody wants be around them, everybody wants to be them, but when we think about it, more often than not, we, ourselves, don't really actually like them.

So why try to forge a friendship or any type of relationship with these people? These people may be the it thing now. They might seem like the biggest deal now, but fast forward 5-6 years, will they still be a big deal to you? Will they still be the it thing? Will you even remember their names? Think about it. If the answer to these questions are no, then 5-6 years from now we will laugh at ourselves for wanting to appeal to them and question what we ever saw in them. So is it really worth our time to be around these people? To internalize their energies and beliefs only to drown out our own inner voices?

You decide.