They Are Not Always Right!

Gates Ogbebor
2 min readJun 8, 2022

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The wind was mild. The clouds were bright with tiny traits of gloom. I was not sad, in fact, the solitude I felt made me wish it would last forever. This was me anytime I felt hurt. And this time, it was a heartbreak, to a greater degree, a “heart-shatter”.

Woman in tears due to emotional hurt.
Why Do Their Opinions Make us Cry?

Permit my manners, I’m Gates. I have a strong feeling that I would be controversial if I gain popularity. Especially in a country like mine where exposure is rather considered a norm breaker, they’d come for you.

I had been nicknamed grammarian because I was pedantic and that was fine, until some said I had GPS (Grammar Pedantry Syndrome) and that really hurt me even though I put on fake smiles and used laughing emojis. They probably thought it was funny, but, associating an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) to someone is never funny.

I was listening to ‘memories’ by Maroon 5. Normally, when I feel solemn I’d listen to sad songs just to get sadder. What happened?

It was the day after being called one with GPS, everyone had behaved like everything was fine. They smiled and laughed and a few brought it up, while I thought to myself ‘this is actually what people saw me as, I was disappointed in the personality I portrayed’. I let it get to me and that’s where I failed myself. But, I didn’t see that, I saw a failure who failed everything and everyone except himself.

Sometime after all of it, I started receiving words like “we miss your grammar”, “you made me conscious around you and it helped me”, “I wish you were around” Etc. This was when I came to the realization that I just have to be me.

“Until we understand that their perceptions don’t really matter, we would be shadows of ourselves.”

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