Let’s set the bar straight.
Everyone loves each other. Everyone watches one another. We all like each other. We are intrigued by one another. Forget what you think or what so and so said. This love and like is inherent. Cats and dogs show it easily. Maybe we can learn.
I have carried a wound since high school. People who know me as a well-liked person in later years don’t know about this. I felt that I was the outcast of the high school. Maybe many teens felt this way. I was shy in those years, afraid to talk socially. I had much on my mind.
The experience I gave to myself, by not reaching out to others, and assuming they thought I was less than valuable stuck with me. No matter how many friendships I have created, successes I have been blessed to experience, and positive life happenings I have encountered, the high school stigma lasted. Serious! It lasted for decades privately in the crevices of my own brain!
Deep in my heart, a desire to prove that my less than status was wrong plagued me.
I would say at times it motivated me! I will confess that it greatly influenced many of my life endeavors. But where was the consensus that I was not good enough? Was it real? Are any of our ideas that others don’t like us as real as we think? And even if someone shows dislike, isn’t their interest in us some indication of a deeper liking, loving, and fascination beneath whatever is said?
One day, decades after high school I wished I could do it over. I wished I could stand in front of all my classmates and profess my unconditional love, respect and fascination with every single one of them. But how could that happen?
I feel my prayer was answered. To my surprise, kids from way back when contacted me on facebook. They invited me to be friends. I was shocked. They remembered me? They would be associated with me? They told me I was beautiful, a profound thinker, a natural teacher. They said I was full of goodness and they had seen all this back then. They had? I thought they barely noticed me except to think of me as untouchable! These were people I admired, appreciated, cared for but never said so.
I had a big crush on one of the most popular boys in school.
He was kind, open-hearted, and loved by everyone. Of course I kept the crush safely hidden and secret. I assumed I was way beneath him in his own mind. He recently found me on facebook to tell me he had a big crush on my in high school. He invited me to be friends now. We are both happily coupled with others so that’s not where my story is going.
I am writing to say, I was stunned into healing. It dawned on me that I carried a story about my inadequacy with which with many others simply did not agree. I had never asked them! I had written a whole script in my head. The kindness and acknowledgement extended by high school kids decades later cleansed my mind. It healed my heart of years of secret pain. True confession here. Yes, a little kindness deeply mattered.
Are you the un-liked one? Are you sure? We all love each other at core. It is our nature. Bless you for the unique gift you are. You are that in whatever thoughts, feelings, and expression you are. And now I know first hand, everyone is watching and absorbing you! Not just the quiet ones like I was.
Read more posts by Laurie Moore, LMFT, CHT, PhD here. Dr. Moore blogs for JenningsWire.
JenningsWire.com is created by National Publicity Firm, Annie Jennings PR that specializes in providing book marketing strategies to self-published and traditionally published authors. Annie Jennings PR books authors, speakers and experts on major top city radio talk shows that broadcast to the heart of the market, on local, regionally syndicated and national TV shows and on influential online media and in prestigious print magazines and newspapers.
