Life Lesson’s from a Fifteen Year Old

As a child and even now, I was always told to be strong and stand my ground. It's not a bad thing, in fact, I support that notion. What I don't support is when people tell you to go through life being a hard, cold rock and only caring about yourself. Now, I'm happy to have a civil debate with anyone on this, in fact I welcome it. I was born into a poorer family, my grandparents lived an even more poor life than I am. Don't take that to the absolute extremes, I live in an apartment and have clothes and food, I just mean I don't have as much as others.

As I was growing up, I always felt like I had a massive pressure on me to be the best and know everything. After all, I was the first born who moved to America, the land of opportunities and freedom [please, if you're from a different country, don't fall for the bullshit]. I learned English perfectly first, I attended extremely good schools in my state, my family saw a future for me, it was all great. Except most people don't exactly understand the HELL I went through to get here. I'll be honest, the pain and suffering has been enough for a life time, I'm actually afraid my heart might give up on me if I become anymore stressed or anxious. As a younger girl, I was very timid but I didn't bite, I loved being friendly and making friends.

Of course, me being different and learning English very slowly, I was bullied for that. I remember that's when my parents started telling me about being strong, like a tank, pushing through and not caring. While I know their advice comes from a place of heart, I don't necessarily agree with it. Obviously it's important to be strong and stand your ground, I encourage it. But everyone always forgets that being kind and showing you care is the most important thing. We don't have enough people like that in the world, why are you trying to strip children's kindness and understanding and replace it with one incredibly close minded view?

Listen to me when I say, being kind IS NOT WEAKNESS. It takes a huge person to be able to stay calm and still be nice to a person even after all the shit they've caused. I understand that at times you need to put someone in their place or call them out on their bullshit, hell, I've don't it multiple times before. But, in other situations dealing with nasty people or anything else, it's your job to be the bigger person. Show them how awful their character really is when they act like that. At the end of the day, blowing up and causing a ruckus does nothing to solve the problem.

I've learned in my fifteen years of being alive what it means to show kindness to everyone and what it means to have a civil conversation. I'll be going on a different tangent here, but it'll tie into my original point. I want people to understand, even the parents out there, that by acting out of control and not listening has consequences. I've usually been brushed off and treated as a complete dunce for most of my life, nevertheless screamed at and told I was worthless. I developed anxiety from a very young age because of that, and I still suffer from it. I have massive panic attacks when a stressful event triggers it, or I'll even get anxiety from small minuscule things. Anxiety can be caused by anyone or any certain of scarring event, friends, parents, other relatives, ect.

Please hear me when I tell you that showing compassion and anything related to it is not weakness. Someone could be going through a really hard time, even if they're horrible to you, and being kind to them could show them that people like you really do exist. If people keep spreading the shit message of "one man for himself" and "stop being so nice, you're a fucking weakling" they could send a person into a spiral downward. That's right, you singlehandedly could drag a person down and slowly tear their life and confidence apart. Don't be that person, I know there are so many people out there who are kind but have been told not to show it.

Please, spread it all around and teach others what it means to be a decent human being. The world is always at war, there's always arguments, there's always all sorts of relationships falling apart, don't add on to the bad things. I for one will carry what I've learned for the rest of my life, and through my work I hope I can spread the message across to my wonderful audience. I know from now on that no one can make me feel silly or inferior for choosing to be loving and understanding.