What's life without a little spice?

The bottle of ketchup almost looked like it was glaring at me. I was having fried rice with a couple of “new friends”. My affinity towards ketchup has been a deal breaker to many people (out of all the horrendous things I’ve done, this they can’t tolerate). I slowly ate the fried rice, clearly not enjoying it. That bland meal reminded me of every other thing that I could have enjoyed but never did, just because of how scared I was of people judging me. I didn’t dance when I wanted to, afraid that people would see that I’m no Michael Jackson.

This fear of judgment has held me back in more ways than I could ever imagine. Every time I hid a part of myself, I started turning a little bit into somebody else. The real me would very much like to ask people questions about themselves but I started asking the easiest of questions which would definitely not give me the answers I wanted. I started becoming a safe option to many people. I had no controversial opinions.I rationalized that if nobody really knew the real me close enough, they wouldn’t be able to hate me. I would have very few people who love me. But in my eyes not being loved was a very low price to pay to become someone with no haters. I started having fewer friends(good ones at least), I started being seldomly missed in parties, I started having fewer topics to talk about. Life as I knew it became one endless game of charades.Some part of me knew what I was doing wrong but my fear of being hated held me back.  

After realizing that I was picking on my food, I reached for the ketchup bottle. My hand was greeted by a couple of shocked pairs of eyes en route to the condiment I was so desperately drawn to. But at that moment the only thing that mattered to me was regaining at least that little part of myself I had lost somewhere along the road. “Yeah, I eat ketchup with almost everything. But hey that's just me. I can be a little weird.” I said with a smile.