If I Could Have the Chance to Choose, I Would Still Choose to Be Me

I didn’t know what I meant when I said, “I want to be free” back then. Not that I didn’t have freedom or free will, but because I felt there were unwritten rules I had to obey to live in this world and this society.

I kept wondering why my mind felt so loud, as if the questions would never stop popping up. Yet I kept thinking, “Do I want that?” And I realized that I’ve been living with the freedom most people don’t, simply because I could ask that question for myself, over and over. Whereas many people around me seem to follow the same protocol for life without asking themselves whether they actually want it. Either because they can’t, or they don’t have the courage. My problem is when I don’t live life the way I actually want, or when I’m living a borrowed dream instead of my own.

I’ve never been a rebel, but I’m probably the most rebellious person in my family because I refused to be told what to do with my life. Not that I knew what to do, or that I had everything figured out, but because I didn’t. I just knew there was more to life than the life everybody lives. More meanings to be found, more feelings to be experienced.

The part of me that used to say “yes” to everyone desperately wanted to say “no,” but I couldn’t because nobody ever taught me how. The unwritten rules told me it might cause a problem. It might hurt others, or it might hurt myself because of the consequences. I used to be so afraid of those consequences that saying “yes” felt easier than bearing the overthinking that came with saying “no.”

I grew up fearing that I could break the harmony instead of keeping it. Fearing that my existence could become the source of pain for everyone around me. Fearing that my “difference” should be hidden or repressed so it wouldn’t hurt others. It made me afraid to open up, to reveal my never-ending curiosity about life and everything in it, and to let my whimsy feel the air I breathe when it simply didn’t make sense to them.

Until one day, I decided it was time to end that way of thinking.

A few months ago, I met my high school teacher at Walmart. We talked for about a minute, and he said, “...I’m so proud of you.” But he didn’t know that the night before I met him, I had been awake the whole night thinking I might have failed. I wasn’t quite satisfied with myself or the life I was living, so I felt the need to get some therapy sessions.

The funny thing is, I don’t feel like those sessions worked for me. Instead of feeling helped, I felt more burdened because I started seeing myself as a victim. And that thought alone made me feel helpless. One day, I decided to take the INFP course because, at that point, maybe it could help a bit.

I didn’t have any expectations, as I just wanted to learn about myself. But I didn’t expect the silly moments that happened during the course to turn out to be the biggest slap for me. There were moments when Sarah, the lecturer in the course, accidentally moved her camera and caught it just as it was about to fall. But that mishap didn’t get cut. She just laughed, said sorry, and moved on with the lesson. At the end, she revealed that it was intentional for us to see the raw videos of her teaching without editing out the mishaps.

I remember she said that sometimes she couldn’t even pronounce a word correctly, or that her accent kept changing because she had spent some time speaking another language that day, or because she had spent time with people with thick accents, like her friends or international clients. So it just happened. And she laughed it off and moved on.

She shared that many INFPs are perfectionists. We want to create the best art, the best work, the best values, and everything aligned with our values, and we want it to be the very best we can give. I couldn’t relate more. The problem with perfectionists like us is that we won’t do or reveal something before we feel ready, fully capable, or deserving enough to showcase our work. And then we procrastinate. We put things off. We delay. We stop.

And because we don’t allow ourselves to make mistakes, we stop ourselves from experiencing growth. From her, I learned that healthy INFPs are those who can bounce back from mistakes faster because they don’t see mistakes as something separate, but as an interconnected part of growth. We become unhealthy INFPs when we get stuck in our mistakes, ruminating on them, hating ourselves for them, and not allowing ourselves to learn from them. Healthy INFPs see life and treat life like a game. They do their best, laugh at their mistakes while learning to do better, and continue to live their best lives, enjoying every second of it because they see it as entertainment instead of an expectation to fulfill.

Now, when I remind myself of the encounter I had with my high school teacher, I realize he didn’t say that because he had to, but because he could. Regardless of whether or not he was actually proud of who I am today, he still could’ve said something else. And that’s what I should think about myself too.

I’ve always been in conflict with how differently everyone around me sees life, how differently I see myself, and how different my values are. But perhaps the thing I’ve been in conflict with the most is believing that the difference in me could interfere with how most people live. When in fact, it’s a privilege I just haven’t fully discovered because I’ve been so busy resenting how different everything about me is, compared to other people.

My journey to becoming a healthy INFP might be different from others', but now it makes sense why those therapy sessions didn’t work for me. Because I was forcing myself to become somebody I never knew or never aimed to be. Because I saw myself as the problem, not as someone I love, who deserves to feel safe to live, to make mistakes, to be different, and to simply be human.

And I guess I can finally say out loud that I’m proud of who I am today, and of who I was before for taking chances, for being brave enough to be me. And if I could have the chance to choose to be somebody else in another life, I would still choose to be me.