I used to be so embarrassed by my school life that I hated everything about it—the photos, the roads that led to the school, the tuition classes, the places I went during the years I was a student, and the people.

Especially the people.

I was scared of them. I was nervous around them. I wanted to hide from them. I wanted to erase that part of my life from myself.

But then I remember what I used to be.

I am a 24-year-old girl now, but a decade ago, I was 14. And when I think about what I went through at that age, I realise that if I saw a little girl going through the same things today, I would cut her some slack.

And still, she smiled.

She helped. She was kind. She laughed and cried and talked. She made jokes and was still able to be happy for the people around her.

And yet, she was so lost.

Thinking of ways to be likeable. Trying to figure out how to be a friend. Doing things you don’t want to do because, hell, it’s cool to them. Somewhere between thinking about what they wanted and what I wanted, I started thinking about what I should want.

And as a kid, all I could do was just that—do what I did.

Before I started feeling like everyone was laughing at me, making fun of me, thinking I was stupid, and believing they would just use me. Before I became aware of how cruel a child can be to another child, I was just a child trying to live.

And after realizing all of this, I lost a part of myself.

The part of me that used to shout a little louder. The quirky child. The overdramatic one.

And yes, I remember all the wrong ways I learned to describe myself. But yes, that is what I was told.

I hated myself because I cut them off.

I did.

And no one cared enough to fight for me. No one talked to me until the end. They lied to me, and then they just started living their lives and slowly, gradually, ignoring me.

I started to see what they actually saw me as.

And it was unbearable.

If I could talk to that 14-year-old, I still wouldn’t know what to say to her. Because I wouldn’t know who, or how, someone could help her handle that.

They were not my friends.

We had our moments, but none of them genuinely cared enough to know me or be friends with me. I friended them into friending me, and I suffered for it.

Now, after giving friendship another chance, I know what friendship is.

And sometimes, that—THAT—was not friendship.

Someone who is ashamed of you.

Someone who lets you drown.

Someone who lets you make the wrong decision when they could have helped you see better.

Someone who disrespects you.

Someone who doesn’t help you, even when they can.

Someone who laughs at you with others rather than laughing with you.

Someone who humiliates you.

Someone who makes you question whether you are worthy of them.

Someone who makes you lick affection off a knife.

That is not a friend.

I still regret that I didn’t have the courage to confront them. To tell them that I knew what they thought of me and that I wanted to cut them off for myself.

But I couldn’t.

And I guess I never will now.

Today, it struck me while I was watching Maxine in Ginny & Georgia.

I don’t hate Maxine, so why do I hate myself for being like her?

Why did it always feel like bullying when I didn’t know whether it was? Why did it feel like a loss when it wasn’t? Why did it feel like a betrayal when, technically, there was nothing to betray?

Maybe because, to me, it was all of those things.

They were not the people who deserved her kindness. They were not considerate enough to think about her or care for her.

Her being “too much” was never the problem.

They were all too much in themselves.

And she was not a problem as long as she was good to be around—as long as she was catering to them. But when she stopped facilitating them, she suddenly became the problem.

She had her rights and her wrongs.

And so did everyone else.

Maybe the difference was that she spent years believing that her wrongs made her harder to love, while everyone else was allowed to simply be human.

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The thing is, I feel that people these days are too much focused on being right, successful, or accomplished rather than on the person who is trying to be right, successful, or accomplished. They like the outcome, but not the process, and it just irks me.

The art is an outcome for the world, but the process of making that art is for the artist.

We are too focused on what we can show the world what we have accomplished that we don’t want to show how many times we failed to accomplish it or what hardships we faced. We want to look like it came so easily to us, so perfectly, as though it was written in our fate that we would have it.

I am a part of that “we,” and I know how I don’t want to show the world that I am struggling to achieve my dreams. I don’t see it fit to post when I am not perfect or presentable, when, in my own eyes, I am not good enough.

But I am also an artist.

And to respect my art, and to truly know who I am, I will respect the process of becoming.

The outcome may be whatsoever, unfortunately that is for the world to judge.

But the process of life—the process of me becoming ME—is for me.