Self-Acceptance

Introduction

Everyone we meet has a different identity. That is what makes us who we are, and how we contribute to the world. Our identities are created based on the people we meet, the places we’ve been, and the things that have sparked our interests. Not everyone has the same identity; however, there are those people who think that those who have an identity that is not the same as theirs cannot be accepted. People will start to wonder if they should change themselves, but it is not these people who need to accept us. People need to be able to accept themselves. In other words, people need to know who they are and be proud of that regardless of what others will think. The society in which we are living, whether it is in school; the community; or the world, tends to dictate how we should be or how we should present ourselves. Thus, we live in a society that makes it hard for us to just be ourselves. However, it is important that we be ourselves and accept who we are because who we are is what makes sense to us. In other words, we need to be ourselves because we are most comfortable with ourselves. On the other hand, trying to be what others expect us to be makes us uncomfortable because we do not psychologically know how to be this person others want us to be because all we know is ourselves. I will talk about how learning to accept myself while staying at a college campus when no one else could. More importantly, I will look at how the concept of self-acceptance is portrayed in the book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and the song “Can’t Change Me” by Chris Cornell. First, I want to talk about the difference between neglect and rejection for the reader to get a better idea of what I mean when I use these terms throughout this entry.

The Difference Between Neglect and Rejection

I took an adolescent development class while I was a student at Rowan, and my professor talked about the different kind of teenagers at high school on the “popularity scale”. The popularity scale I refer to is called the scale of sociometric status, or the scale that refers to how liked or disliked a teenager is by his or her peers. This scale was developed by Cioe and Dodge in 1988. Although people tend to think as neglect and rejection being synonyms, they have two different meanings. Although the connotation of the word neglect implies an extreme state of being ignored, in developmental and adolescent psychology, neglect refers to being ignored, but not ridiculed to the extent that someone of rejected sociometric status would be. Adolescents who are rejected are those who are ridiculed by their peers that are made to feel they are excluded from the school atmosphere. These are the students most likely to experience mental illness because of the rejection they feel. In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Oscar would be described as rejected because his peers ridicule him for being a nerd. However, when I talk about being ignored in High School and while I was living at Rowan, I would be considered to have neglected sociometric status.

How I Learned to Accept Myself

When I started my first semester at Rowan University, I decided I wanted to live on campus. I thought this was the beginning of the rest of my life, but my dream of living on my own; making new friends; and maintaining a beautiful friendship with my old friends at Camden County College turned out to be a nightmare. I have Asperger’s which makes it hard for me to make or maintain friendships. I am a very shy person and my mannerisms are awkward. For example, I feel like I do not know when I should leave someone alone or when it is okay to ask for a hug from someone. In my opinion, no one can categorize who I am as a person because I have re-invented myself in ways to make it hard to classify; however, if people were to categorize me, they would say that I am a nerd with a rock; grunge aesthetic. Most people tend to ignore me when they see a person of my character, which I learned at Rowan when I felt like no one wanted to have a conversation. I would sit in my apartment and wonder what was wrong with me. It was not too hard to figure out the answer. I had Asperger’s and I hated talking to new people. I wanted them to talk to me first, but they would not because of who I am. Everyone just thought I was that weird and awkward girl, and no one wanted to talk to me. I asked myself, “Is there anything I can do to change this?”

I concluded that I could not do anything about my social situation at Rowan because I simply felt it was outside of my comfort zone to start a conversation with people who would think I was too weird to be their friend anyway. I was an awkward grunge-freak, and none of these people would want to be my friend. However, I did not want to change who I was because that is the only identity I know. Why should I change it to impress someone who would not appreciate a girl with Asperger’s who likes grunge? People who are not going to like me for who I am are not worth the effort of socializing. Any form of socializing is hard for me, so why should I try when I am just going to be neglected anyway.