Just be yourself

It’s age-old advice, right? Just be yourself and your people will find you. Don’t pretend to be someone else, it’s not sustainable and your friends will fall in love with someone who doesn’t exist.

Don’t worry about labels, just be yourself. Never mind that sometimes labels help people find themselves.

But, how does this advice hold up when being yourself requires outside assistance? There’s this expectation that you relax into yourself. That once you stop worrying about what other people think it will all fall into place. Sometimes though, that’s not the case.

You might be trying to find your way back to a fitter more active version of your pre-covid self. You might be trying to break life-long self-destructive habits. You might need gender-affirming care – without which your true self is unattainable.

I want to challenge the idea that being yourself is as natural as breathing or that it should be effortless. For some people, being themselves is an act of bravery. It can put them in very real danger. Even if being yourself doesn’t create an opening for people to hate-crime you, it can still be taken negatively.

Hell, at no point in my adult life have I not been myself—my wonderfully quirky self—yet when I adopted better ways to describe and express the things I feel, I became a burden. I’ve been told I’m trying to control people when I’ve asked for gender-neutral language. I’ve lost friends because I’m “so open minded [my] brain might fall out.” I’ve been told to “just be [myself]” by people who have told me I’m “too weird” to my face.

Sometimes the self a person wants to be is an improved version. It’s going to take effort, and probably therapy. There’s no “just” – it’s a monumental achievement to confidently be yourself when you’re someone society disdains.

I can’t speak for others, but I personally am not pretending to be someone else or trying to be something I’m not. I am being myself, and if I need help to do that—be it depression medication, HRT, surgery, or something else—there’s nothing wrong with that.

Miriam Cumming is an author, witch, and non-binary person trying to find themself. They write for the misfits, in the hopes that understanding will bring acceptance and the world will become a better place.