There's a J In there… Somewhere!

I have never understood peer pressure, and, growing up I really tried.

I remember the ‘cool’ kids offering me a cigarette at the bus stop after a bad day. My grandma smoked & I hated the smell, so it was easy to say no.

I remember going to a party where everyone was drinking. I hated the taste of the drinks on offer, so stuck with lemonade. No one had thought to spike it. I also didn’t like the feeling of being out of control, so it was easy to say no, and be bored in the corner so I didn’t go to another party.

I remember the pressure to dress a certain way. My parents didn’t have the money to buy the clothes, and many were scratchy and uncomfortable. I tried to dress the way the other kids were, but it was never quite right.

I remember missing out on conversations as my peers would talk about TV shows I didn’t watch or music I didn’t listen to.

Even the activities the other kids were doing were things I either couldn’t afford, didn’t enjoy doing, made me feel awful, or were otherwise things that just didn’t fit.

It wasn’t a deliberate decision on my part to not follow the crowd. In many ways I wanted to, sometimes desperately wanted to, so that I would fit in, that I would be accepted.

But when it came down to it, peer pressure just didn’t work.

When I tried to fit in, it wasn’t quite right and I felt left out and alone.

When I rejected it completely, I was an outcast and felt left out and alone.

I was lucky that I had people in my life, outside school, who encouraged me with the things I enjoyed.

I spent holidays reading books, going on trips to Scienceworks and the museum, going to visit my godfather and his amazing train set. I would be able to do the things that I enjoyed.

However when it came to school, there was pressure to fit in, and I never did.

So much of the pressure didn’t come from my peers either! After a while, they kind of left me alone.

There was pressure from teachers to hang out with the kids in my year level. From wellbeing officers who didn’t understand that I wasn’t lonely, at least not in the way that they understood being lonely.

These well meaning adults just added to the pressure I felt to fit in. To conform, to be like everyone else.

They didn’t understand that I didn’t fit in. That the things that interested my peers didn’t interest me. That those things that they thought were important simply weren’t to me for so many reasons.

So I tried to fit in. I did activities to get involved and make connections, and I did, for a while, so long as that activity was happening, but nothing stuck, nothing lasted.

So many people talk about peer pressure and how it’s a ‘bad thing’, about the pressure to smoke or drink or do drugs. I found those things were easy to avoid as they didn’t make sense to me.

I found the worse pressure was that to be ‘normal’ and do the things the other kids were interested in.

I used to think there was something wrong with me because I just wasn’t interested and it was hard to pretend to be interested.

Now I know that I am me, what interests me is what interests me. I am fine with being on my own, in fact I need that down time to function.

And that is okay.

I just wish I had known this when I was younger.