The life’s most valuable lesson that I have learnt is that everyone is different from one another in various ways. No two people can have the same personality. Had God created people with same personalities, we would have become robots with different characteristics rather than individual human beings.

But society does not appreciate the differences and has set its own ideal personality mould that everyone is supposed to fit in to. This was the reason I completely changed myself to simply fit in this society — the society which had no appreciation for unique, shy or sombre personalities, instead bold and charming personalities were highly admired. Therefore, I decided to become one of them.

But the main problem was my shyness, but even this hurdle could not stop me from becoming the ‘dream me’.

The first step to fit in the crowd was to look like them, so I started using excessive makeup, high heels and ridiculously expensive and branded clothes. I found this alarming that how human nature was no different than animal behaviour, as certain species of animal only socialise with the same species. The same was the case with people I wanted to surround myself with, because as I copied their style, they begun to accept me.

To boost my confidence, I begun to step out of my comfort zone and started socialising more, whether I liked it or not. While I underwent this dramatic change, my best friend Sara never left my side.

As days, weeks and months passed by, I became increasingly popular and well-known throughout the school and had countless friends. I went to outings with my new friends every weekend to various places. While I basked in the glory of my fame, my best friend Sara was quite neglected; because I always had the company of various people and was never alone. After months of hard work, I finally was living my dream life but due to the extreme change in my personality, my parents grew concerned because they preferred the older version of me: shy mature and quiet. They despised my over-confident and over-enthusiastic self.

The change had many positive outputs but they could not outnumber one of its negative aspect. I could not write, since my time was always consumed by senseless outings and socialising with friends on various apps.

From the moment I had learnt to hold a pencil in my hand, I had loved writing stories. I would daydream about my stories all daylong and then putting them on a paper would be a relief to me. To me, writing was like what breathing is to any living thing. Through writing, I could create my own world where humans could fly and birds could walk, where the most extraordinary miracles could happen in no time, where I was the master of my world.

I sent stories to various magazines; some got published and some did not but when they did get printed, I always felt overjoyed to see my in writing in front of me. If anyone would ask me what profession would I choose in the future, I would grin at them in a dreamy way and tell them that I wanted to be a famous best-selling author. At that time, I had felt confident of my dreams of myself and of my life.

Since I had undergone a change, I felt insecure about myself. I knew that I was pretty and thin, but I still tried these senseless diet plans as many others did in my new circle of friends. I had also stopped writing stories except for English and Urdu assignments which I oddly begun to enjoy. It was a secret between me and Sara that I had been a master storyteller because now l found that surprisingly embarrassing.

While everyone in my newly found social circle claimed to know me inside out, yet they only knew the facade I had put up to become popular. As each day passed, I felt my original self slipping away. I started to feel depressed and exhausted because, trust me, putting up a facade is not easy.

This is when my best friend Sara stepped in to rescue me. You know how if you don’t see a person for a long time you start to forget what the person looks like; the same was the case me. The more I pretended, the more my real personality began to slip away.

Sara started bothering me by inquiring about my lack of interest in writing, sometimes I would shrug it off, at other times I would answer with anger or ignore her, but never did I tell her the truth that it was my facade which was not letting me write.

As weeks went by, her plan started to work as she had invoked my desire to write again. I felt ready to burst because writing had been a way to vent my emotions. My writing showed how I was feeling. At last, the dam I had built to control the flow of my emotions could no longer contain them and I started to write and once I started, I could not stop. I retired myself to my bedroom leaving behind my newly-acclaimed friends.

The lesson which I learnt from this episode of my life was that no matter what society says, you have to remain yourself — your true self. If we become prototypes of one another, then we are destroying the purpose behind God giving us different personalities.

Published in Dawn, Young World, March 3rd, 2018