Generally, I find that one of the best qualities a person can have is the ability to be self-aware. Good personal hygiene is up there, too, don’t get me wrong. And untouchable taste in music. And also being well-coiffed.

But yes, being self-aware is hell-and-away one of the most important qualities to have. I’ve been trying for ages, basically throughout my puberty-to-adulthood years, to become a self-assured, self-aware person.

I think that, for the most part, I have succeeded.

But, what do you know? I wouldn’t be writing a blog post about it if I didn’t have something else to say!

Wouldn’t that be a hell of a post? “Don’t you wish you were self-aware like me? *hair flip* ‘Kay, bye!”

No, no, no, nothing is ever that easy.

I’ve wanted to write about this for a while now, but it’s kind of hard to put into words, so I’m going to try for a metaphor with food. How predictable.

Say that you’re out at a restaurant and you order a sandwich. Presumably, depending on the fancy-schmancyness of the establishment, it’ll probably come with fries, right? Okay, maybe if the owner of the establishment is a douche, you have to pay a little extra for the fries. Fork over the dough and you get your fries. A large collection of beautiful, greasy, salty little suckers. Absolutely GOR-GE-OUS.

One by one (or two by two, no one is judging you), you chow down on those fries until you get to the bottom of the pile, where you see it. The inevitable. The charred, twisted, dark-brown of the ever-present Burnt Fry.

Sigh. All of the other fries were so lovely and golden, and here’s this raggedy lookin’ remnant left on your plate. How disappointing.

Okay, so, that’s me. That fry? The burnt one? That’s what I feel like sometimes. I have been so lucky in my life to have had tons and tons of beautiful, golden, French-fry friends, but I have a nasty habit of comparing myself to them in basically every way, but especially with looks.

I didn’t really start comparing myself to my friends until high school and college, where I felt like I always had a friend that was more fashionable than me, more beautiful than me, with better hair than me, and the list does go on.

College was tough because that’s also when I started caring about boys. It’s a bloodbath out there on a college campus, and on a small one like where I went to school, it’s almost like you’re constantly competing for some of the male attention, and when you get it, YESSSS HAHA TAKE THAT, INSECURITY! I HAVE BEEN VALIDATED! GET ON MY LEVEL! And when you didn’t get it, you found yourself comparing yourself, pretty unhealthily, might I add, to the gals who were getting it.

Oh, LAWD, it was such a production. We’d get gussied up and, while we loved looking great on our own, we always felt like it was a little bit wasted if we didn’t get a proper amount of male attention that night when we went out.

I have friends who are so incredibly beautiful, inside and out. And I would put myself up against them, time and again, to see if I hit the mark. When I felt like I didn’t, it would just be one more thing to run myself down. This is where the “self-aware” waters started to run pretty murky.

Like I said, I am self-ASSURED, baby. I know my WORTH. So why, pray tell, does all of that happy horseshit fly out the dang window when it comes to my friends?

You see my dilemma. The Burnt Fry Syndrome.

So, it’s not like I graduated college years and years ago, and I’m reminiscing on my alma mater. No, I graduated in May. I’m basically still a youth. I’m as angsty as a teenager without all of the “I hate my parents” drama and better common sense (usually).

This Burnt Fry Syndrome is not a thing of the far past. Not by a long shot, actually. I still deal with this, and I don’t foresee it really going anywhere.

I’m thinking that we live in a society that tends to put people up against each other, in almost every way. So much so that we start doing it to ourselves, and then it’s like one big, bad snowball effect.

I’m hoping that by giving it a name and speaking out about its existence, I can start breaking down the walls of Burnt Fry Syndrome. Because, at its core, let’s be real here. You aren’t the burnt fry. Not that there is anything even WRONG with burnt fries, because, honestly, the crispier the better.

But the constant comparing to the rest of the fries on the plate, it HAS to stop. Stop worrying about being the beautiful one or the fashionable one or the one with the best makeup skills or the one who all the boys like or the one with the fiercest eyebrows.

You don’t have to be the best out of your friends. Just be the best friend that you can be, and everything else will follow.

Your Now-Hungry-for-Greasy-Fried-Food Servant,

Em

Thumbnail image courtesy of https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/american-french-fries