Honestly, I’m confused. I’m confused about everything: why I do things, why other people do what they do, if anybody really cares about anything other than themselves, even most of what I believe in. The list goes on. From the time I was small, I wasn’t a very normal child. I beat up my sister for absolutely no reason, and got mad at the smallest things. Being constantly compared to her, while she told me how ugly or stupid I was didn’t help my self confidence either. This all just confused me about all the things I’ve learned while growing up and the things I’m now learning.
I could tell you about all the many things in my childhood that made me that way, but I’ll just start from middle school. At that time in my life, the attitude I had, said,” I’m not important enough to be heard or even cared about” But once in middle school, I started actually making a lot of friends. But, the only thing I thought of was pleasing them so they’d stay around. Eventually, my grades, and drama with friends got to me, and I went back to staying alone in classrooms after school. My attitude then became, “I’m going to do my work, and nothing else. Please don’t judge me.” I didn’t know what has normal, but I knew I wasn’t it. Being a loner that actually had a lot of friends was a strange feeling. In addition, having no one to talk to about everything didn’t help.
This continued into freshman year. Although I had my friends, I still didn’t have any friends. Putting on a smile for start of high school, made me think that this year, things might be different. For a while it was, but somewhere along the way, my attitude found me. I walked around school as a small insignificant freshman wearing a face saying, “ Stay away, you’re irritating, and if you bother me, you’ll regret it.” Eventually, my bad mood took over half my brain. And I said half of my brain for a reason. I would have probably been clinically diagnosed as being bipolar. At one point during the day, I could hug my friend for a minute straight, and the next moment I’d be talking bad about them to their face because there was something I didn’t like. I judged people so harshly that I was constantly frustrated. The only thing going through my mind was, why are you doing that? You’re such a bad person, I don't understand!” Knowing I wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around, I tried to fix it. I thought back to when I actually was one of the most pleasant people to be around, and tried to act like everything was the same. But, by that time, I was too mean without any explanation for anyone to care. I thought the rest of my life was going to be like that.
But, happily, that wasn’t the case. Judo literally saved my life. Not the sport really, but more the people I met because of it. Even under my negative judging, the people I met were nice. No one constantly talked about how popular they thought they were, or acted like they were the most important thing in the world. Of course they weren’t perfect; some of the boys were a little more sensitive than I would’ve thought, knowing they were in a tough sport. They taught me that not everyone was the same, and that no one was perfect. This is when I started to become less confused. My new friends brightened the week a practice at a time. I even met one of my best friends that I can talk to about almost anything during this season. Over the summer, I had a lot of time to discover things about myself and people in general. It was like an isolation period where I went away from the world. When I went back to school as a sophomore, the new outlook I held, helped me gain back the friends I had lost. I stopped judging people so harshly, knowing that people are a certain way because God mad them like that. They had gone through things I didn’t know about, and for all I knew, they were going through something at that moment. I became patient and understanding to those who once set me on edge.
Now that it’s the end of my sophomore year, I’ve learned even more about life and the people put into my own. What I went through changed my thinking and my actions. Because I didn’t want anyone to be treated like I had been, I stopped judging so much, and instead started listening and watching the people that frustrated me. I saw and tried my best to understand them and the things they did. Still, I am confused. I will always be confused or frustrated at things I don’t completely understand. So yes, I don’t completely know why I do things, why others do what they do, or even what I believe in. But from all that I’ve learned, I know this, “You shouldn’t judge people to quickly, because everyone looks at the world from their own perspective.” This, I believe.
