Live life as an exclamation not an explanation

I was looking at one of those posters which has instructions about living life.  Normally I look at them and think what a waste of time they are.  In this one this one sentence jumped out.

I so often find myself not truly being me, second guessing what I should be doing, worrying about what other people think.  As a consequence watering down who I am.  So often I find people disapproving of my playfulness not with words, but a look that says you shouldn't be doing that.  People tell me that I shouldn't respond one way but when I actively choose to do something different tell me that I have that wrong as well.

Actually, why do I let people tell me what I should do and why should I be trying to impress them.  But the blatant truth is I do, and I am sick of it.  I use up so much energy trying to justify and explain who I am rather than just living me.

I guess this ties up into my musing for the last few weeks of how do I perform for an audience of one and how do I relentlessly pursue who I am created to be. 

I am so aware that I feel so many things tell us how to be, how to eat, how to think, how to dress and how we unwittingly maintain these standards.  its partly about the media but its also about the people that we spend time with not necessarily in terms of friends but in terms of groups we belong to.  I have different types of clothes for different groups.  Now at one level that is logical because I couldn't wear something heavy when I dance.  But it seems to me that I am trying to create an image that fits in with the rest of the group as much as what is comfortable to wear.

This image sensor is so acute that when I do things like go shopping I am checking out to make sure I not only fit in the the general image of those around me, but I am doing it slightly better than everyone else.  Now the truth is I totally fail at it primarily because I refuse to spend the money it would take to do that but how does my little head even go there in the first place.

There is part of me that would like to go back to being the kid I was before I was bullied.  The one that was carefree, the one that when I was much smaller had to be put on reigns to stop me talking to strangers, the one who just enjoyed being me and wasn't constrained by the groups image.  You know one of the reasons why I was bullied for so long is that I refused to be like the rest of the group.  I used to do it naturally but I feel that that freedom has been beaten out of me.

I so want to be able to live my life as an exclamation not an exclamation.  Lifting my head to the world and shouting this is me rather than head down hoping that no body notices when I get it wrong.