"Just be yourself - Social Conformity"

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I've spent my life fighting this too. My parents bullied me because they would say I had no personality, whatever that means. They'd also blame the harassment I had to deal with on me and make vague statements as to why it happened, even punishing me for being harassed, so I'd stop doing whatever it was that was causing it and since I had no idea what that was, what could I do?

They also tried to force me to be just like my sister. We had once gone to 2 separate private schools and we did fine. Then they moved me against my will to her school and then after that, we always had to be in the same school. They wanted me to worship her and dragged me to all of her school marching band events like games, parades, etc., and of course I hated it. I just wanted to stay home.

Then they began force swimming on me, under the oppression of my sister of course, in an attempt to get me to do what others do. "Everybody swims and everybody likes swimming" they would say, and come up with every excuse in they could make up to cram swimming down my throat.

When I had interests I wanted to pursue, they were disrupted, using the excuse "you need to balance yourself out." I never quite understood why the amount of other activities I needed for this so called "balance" just happened to be whatever amount my sister did. Even more baffling was she never had to drop her activities for anything I wanted to do and in fact, my parents often defended her telling me not to bother her. I would point out she gets a choice and I don't and of course my parents had no answer for that, and that still makes no sense to me now.

Why they couldn't just let me be me, live a life separate from my sister, etc., I don't know, I just know what they did to me was wrong, they should have let us be individuals. I'm not my sister, nor should have to be or be punished for not being her.

In additon, I have 3 older brothers and they weren't treated this way either. Them and my sister were all allowed to be themselves, why wasn't I? I always will have nothing bat hatred and contempt for forced conformists.

Who wants to be normal? Normal's boring.

I am what I am and that's all that I am

I am trying to figure out who it is. I have so much anxiety it makes me sometimes talk compulsively and say stupid things. Plus I am so influenced by people around me. I am in panic mode around people trying to figure out what the right thing to say and do is, because it never seems to be the right thing, even if all my instincts tell me it is. I realize what I have done is slowly eliminated from my life all arenas where conformity will be expected. All of them. Facebook is probably the only place where I still get that annoyed feeling when I realize I am too cynical and blunt to say what I want. I am still on there, but mostly I don't say much, except responding to other people.

definitely just be yourself.

When people tell you that....they don't honestly mean it. It's sorta something yer "supposed to say".

I honestly mean it when I tell you that. I'm myself on a daily basis. Do people love me for it? No...but they didn't love me any better when I tried to be more like them; they just claimed they did, and insisted I tried even harder cause "something wasn't right". Or, they just hated me regardless.

So yeah...be yourself. In the very least, you'll love you, and that's more important than what anyone else thinks; and in the long run it's also all that matters.