Better

I've come to realise that most of my thinking is done late at night. This is why I can usually be found emailing people at midnight, blogging at times like this and tidying my bedroom at 1am. Tonight I'm thinking about being better.

When I was in high school, there was a myth maintained about me that helped to spread a ridiculous belief that I was just ''good at stuff''. Of course, I wasn't. Ultimately, the grades I achieved and the things I accomplished were down to a combination of extreme hard work and luck - but because I was never the sort of person who made a point of talking about my work, nobody ever knew. 

I had one friend who frequently told me ''well, you're just better'', and while that might just be one person, it was a belief held by more than a few people, and it confused me...a lot. In all honesty, perhaps while I was fishing a teaspoon out of a pan of frying vegetables for this person, maybe I was better at the task in hand, but for every one thing I'm good at, there are ten things I'm terrible at. 


I mean, I cannot draw to save my life. KS3 Art was the most depressing class I have ever experienced - it was only once I chose not to study it further at GCSE that I realised it wasn't that I wasn't trying hard enough, it was just that I wasn't talented at it. But being bad at art also made me bad at textiles, graphics, woodwork, anything practical really. The only thing I could do was Food Tech, which was why I ended up in the ridiculous situation of fishing a burning teaspoon out of a frying pan. 


And I could never do PE, which meant that I was always in the 'loser group' with the stereotypical bitchy girls and the people that didn't want to be in school, let alone PE. My weird feet have meant that as I've grown up, I've never been able to run properly, and my weird legs have always been an issue. When I struggled my way up a mountain in Croatia last summer, our World Challenge leader took me to one side a few days later and told me I should get my feet checked out because they looked like they had problems - but she was also the same woman who left someone halfway up the aforementioned mountain about to pass out so that she could flirt with our teacher instead. Smooth.


So I've accepted that I'm never going to be an artist, and I'm never going to be an athlete. There are just some things that you can't change. You just have to work round them and learn from your bad experiences. I'm always the first up a hill now because I've learnt how to walk uphill properly, and while I will never be able to draw or paint on paper or canvas, that doesn't mean I can't paint pumpkins for Halloween or be creative. 


And that is the point: You can realise that you're never going to be the best at something, and use that to better yourself. 


Other people are also brilliant for making you want to better yourself. I watched every series of The Choir by Gareth Malone that was on TV and spent years wishing I was in a choir. When I started college, I joined one, and went from barely being able to speak to people to running for Amnesty group President and peer counselling training. Because of one TV show, I am better. 


Our Spanish teacher during Linguastars, María, had us making up plays and pretending to take part in 'Cita a Ciegas' (Blind Date). Part of my character's role involved throwing a fake ice cream across a room full of complete strangers while shouting angrily in a foreign language. Yes, I was terrified. She used the cliché of ''I want to make you shine'' to encourage me to do it, and somehow, I did. And afterwards my oral confidence in Spanish rose dramatically. And now, because of one slightly crazy Spanish lady, I am better.


There are so many things I wish I could improve - general awareness of world issues, knowledge of what we discuss in the Amnesty meetings, relationships with my friends, relations between family members, and more. But what I've learnt this year is that if you don't fail, you don't improve. 


I've spent so long in the past two years believing that I'm not good enough. I remember being in year seven and just having no friends - I didn't conform to what everybody else in the year did, so I wasn't good enough to have real friends. I remember sitting on my bedroom floor one evening texting one of my 'so called' friends and deciding I wanted to be better than the people who put me down. All the way through high school I suppose I maintained that idea, but it got hard when people I didn't even know decided to believe it too. 


In truth, I'm no better or no worse than the next person. Only now as I sit here typing do I realise that my lack of happiness at grades and achievements is due to my motives for achieving them. But I'm different to that person - the pressures on me have gone and so have the pressures I placed upon myself. I might not always be the best at everything, but I can better myself...and trust me when I say that happiness may only start to appear when you realise this - it did for me.


Besos ♥ 
Rachel

"And I never want to let you down, forgive me if I slip away. Sometimes it's hard to find my ground, 'cause I keep on falling as I try to get away from this crazy world." - Josh Groban - February Song