Loving who you are starts with loving where you were

The moment I stopped comparing, I started loving the person I already was.

Growing up, I was almost the same as everyone else around me. No one took trips outside of Canada unless they were visiting their families. There were no “family vacations”, as even the best-equipped families lived pay cheque to pay cheque. Having access to a car growing up was more than what many of my friends could say they had, and never getting the chance to leave Ontario was something that many around me had in common.

It wasn’t until I got older and entered high school that I grew self-conscious of my life. Learning about the experiences and the connections that other people had shocked me and made me feel as if I was failing the life I was leading. Hearing about how people knew other people from different schools in the area shocked me. Being as shy as I was, I could barely meet people at my own school, let alone make connections at schools in completely different parts of the city.

Playing hockey only made my insecurities worse.

Being on teams from the same region meant I was able to meet people with similar upbringings—albeit with a more extroverted flair to meeting people. But then playing on richer teams, with people from richer neighbourhoods, completely rocked my perspective. Hearing them casually talk about spending a summer in the south of France and seeing the rows of BMWs pull up to games next to my dad’s old Honda Civic continued this spiral of shame and self-pity.

When I mentioned I’d never left Ontario to people in downtown Toronto, they’d react with a mix of horror and disgust. Proceeding to talk to me in a patronizing tone with comments like “It’s a beautiful country, and you have no interest in seeing it.”

I was aware that Queen’s University has a reputation for being a rich school. Coming here, I was afraid to overshare or slip out something about my life that I found embarrassing, which at this point, made up majority of my experiences.

I couldn’t believe the reaction I received—my life and perspective completely turned around when I found people who were interested in me.  Having people hang on every word I’d say about experiences and memories that I believed to be minuscule, compared to the fantastic lives’ others had lived, blew me away.

I realized that I’d spent my entire life comparing myself to others, and I believed that my worth was based on what I had done. I now know that I’d been short-sighted to let little experiences with unique people completely cloud my judgment.

I’ll never forget the moment that completely changed my life and made me stop comparing myself to others and not just to accept but love the life I’ve led. It was at the end of my first year, a friend of mine was listening to me talk about my emotions about an ex-girlfriend—they said to me, “Hearing you talk and the emotions and experiences you’ve had, I realize I’ve never actually been in love before.”

To have someone be so moved by my life in this way was both incredible and heartbreaking.

Up until last year, I used to believe that I was behind and that I had lived over twenty years of wasted opportunities—which sounds dramatic, but it’s true. I used to believe that I needed to catch up on all the wasted time, and my goals and aspirations got so jumbled because I felt I needed to do everything I thought I’d missed before I ran out of time. I thought that once I had done, been, tried, and completed everything that I felt my life was missing, that I would be complete.

If I could, I would go back and talk to my younger self and remind myself that I matter and that people value me for who I am, not what I’ve done. I’d like to relieve the constant pressure and insecurity I once faced. I could never fathom that someone would want to hear about me, a boring homebody that I believed was only interesting since I was an anomaly. I didn’t think people would like me, but I now know that I didn’t like myself.

The fear of missing out is more than a situational feeling; it’s something that can weigh down on you for a long time. This innate fear of missing out on something doesn’t even have to stem from an actual event or situation that happened. I began feeling that I was missing out on anything that I believed could lead to a fond memory or an impressive story. This led to a small situation snowballing until every aspect of your life is consumed by the fear of being left behind everyone else.

But being in university has completely changed my life.

There are many differences between us, but there are so many people who are excited to hear about me, and not just the brochure version of my life. People are blown away at things like my uncanny ability to quote The Simpsons by heart, my genuine interest in niche music sub-genres, and personal aspects that have made me the person I am today.

While it’s true that I didn’t have the same experiences as everyone else growing up, I believe I had the perfect opportunity to become what I am today—someone I’m proud of and someone I hope people grow to like, as much as I have grown to like me.

If you continue comparing your experiences, goals, and achievements to everyone else, you’ll never truly live your life; you’ll just get stuck in a never-ending loop of trying to catch up to something never-ending like I did. Trying to catch up to others is like telling yourself that you are broken or behind, but that’s not the case, and there is nothing wrong with the experiences you’ve had.

There’s nothing wrong with me, and the genuine friendships and connections I’ve made during my time at Queen’s have proved that to me

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Postscript, Queen's, Student life

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