You can say and know that you are just being yourself when the song in your heart does not match that of everyone else's. It is when nothing in "pop" culture resonates. You know you are just being yourself when you can be by yourself. You know you are just being you when you let our hair grow out the way yours was made to instead of like everyone else's or something you saw in a magazine or to look like your mother's. You know you are just being yourself when you let yourself be yourself: your legs be hairy instead of shaving them to be like a baby's. When you don't paint up your face to look like a statue or to get a reaction. When you cry because you are unhappy rather than beating someone who is "tough" and yelling.
Just being yourself is being honest with and about yourself. Shrugging and saying "it don't bother me" when it hurts or makes you angry is lying and being someone else. When you're crying to the same songs, flirting with the same rythms, mimicking the same dances as everyone around you, you are nothing but a clone in a machine programmed to say the words "there is no one else like me", when in fact, you are saying the same thing as everyone else around you.
Getting a tattoo does not make you original or young and hip, just expressing yourself. It makes you just like everyone else because very few people don't have tattoos these days. When you get your face pierced in some ridiculous way, you are not just being you and expressing yourself. You're being just like every other teenager out there seeking some way to look cool, tough and part of the crowd, imitating entertainers instead of yourself. When you decide to act tough instead of admitting you're scared you are being a coward. People will make fun of you and ridicule you because you are lying. They judge you because you have judged yourself as unworthy of expression.
Tough is being brave enough to tell the truth: I'm hurt, I'm scared, I'm angry. Being brave is not being afraid of yourself. Being brave is not being afraid of just being yourself. "Just being different" or "just being crazy", is just being like everyone else who is trying to stand out in a crowd. And yet when you stand out for being different, truly being yourself, you try to be just like everybody else by dying your hair a different color then everyone else in your immediate environment who is dying their hair to be a different color than yours is. If you stop shaving your legs just to be different then you are just being like everyone else. If you are not bathing or cutting your hair just to be different and prove you just don't care...you are being just like everyone else out there.
When you complain no one understands you: well, no kidding. You are not being you, you're not being honest. How are they supposed to understand if you are not being an explanation; expressing your true inner being? People will only tell you what you are telling yourself already.
And when you are a woman wearing men's clothing, a girl wearing her boyfriend's jacket or hat or ring, you are wearing a man because you think it makes you pretty. You're not just being yourself. You are being a part of that man, you're being his hat, his jacket or his ring because you think it makes you desireable to be anything but just you, just being yourself. And he will treat you like his property, like he treats his hat, his jacket or his ring. And you whine he is not treating you like a human being. Well, you're not being a human being. You're being an ornament, a decoration. And you're whining at him and blaming him because he is not acting like the ornament you have made him to be.
When an adult tells you how you are causing your own problems, it is not as you say: that they just don't understand. It's because they understand perfectly. I know where you are coming from because I came from there myself. I know the consequences of the choices you are making because I made them myself. And you might say "Well, your life isn't turning out well" and I tell you....that is my point exactly.
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