Authenticity

Authenticity is a beacon in the night, with the radiant Polaris guiding celestial navigators on their way. That image is in my mind fervently whenever I imagine what authenticity is. Everyone knows what it means to be authentic, yet its definition remains elusive. Something so simply daunting hindering the progress many voices struggle to discover.
Bluntly, authenticity is self. Though, I struggle to accept this oversimplified statement on the basis I believe it to be something more, which often perplexes me. I used to believe I was a one of a kind, a bedazzling jewel shimmering brilliantly. Back then, I was different in almost every way to others. Being myself came easily. As I became older, and really started getting into my craft, getting better with each story. It became easier to construct my imagination freely on the page. And yet, sometimes I’d hear how similar it sounded to something else. This deeply disturbed me, as I had no intentions of sounding like another’s story. That statement, “Everything has been made under the sun,” sent me spiraling.
Constantly, we are around others. Their experiences we share, creations we’ve absorbed, quirks ingrained in our memories. We learn by what others teach us, consumed in the swaths of society’s culture. If nothing is truly new, if the world that surrounds us forms and molds us within the paradigms of creativity and personality, how do we determine authenticity?
Evolution perpetuates, and consciously or not, we grow to understand the expectations and preferences surrounding us. As a child with such uniqueness, I desperately wanted people to feel connected with and make my aisle a little less lonely. Over time, I developed ways to talk with my family, friends, teachers, and elders I so regularly familiarized myself with. It developed into a seamless mask that I could garnish myself with.
The art of people pleasing is polarizing and depleting in all aspects of the terms. After years of waltzing through the wild, my chameleon performed its camouflage meticulously. This escaped went on for years, all the while transforming me. Eventually drained, I could no longer go on running the charade. I went in a spiral, and inevitably, people I thought I was close to couldn’t accept all of me. No longer was I am a cookie cutter outline of projections people wanted me to be, but that was also when I realized I no longer knew me.
Thus, began my journey, uncovering my authenticity. I sacrificed many aspects of myself, left to wonder if I could ever get those parts of me back, or if I would be reborn anew? Defeated before I even began, it was hard to fathom how I would find myself. It felt ridiculous. How could one notion they don’t understand or even know themself? Only crazy people! It takes courage to go through sludge and muck fighting for yourself. It’s knowing your roots, developing your values, a discovery of opinions of things you learned. Finding your voice is everyone’s individual journey, to unearth your authentic star.