Two full hands.

There have been many occasions in my life where I have actively been an inauthentic version of myself in attempts to achieve something I apparently deemed worth it. Whether it was for friends, or praise, or just a little extra attention, being slightly fake, or exaggerated seemed like the sensible route to success. And while I've looked back on those many occasions (one of them being my entire middle school existence) with a sickening sense of embarrassment, it hasn't stopped me from getting caught up in the inauthenticity of trying too hard from time to embarrassing time.

And it isn't very often that I find myself red-cheeked or nauseous with embarrassment. In fact, it happens so infrequently that I almost always am more giddy about the embarrassment than actually embarrassed; there's something sort of thrilling about being embarrassed for me. But when it comes to the times where I've bound myself by the ropes of fakeness and over exaggeration, not a single bit of giddiness is involved. I find those times so embarrassing that they're actually hard to replay in my head. Yet while these embarrassing occasions happen rarely, they are also the deepest etched in memories, sometimes the most stomach turning memories I have to replay.

I hate looking back and thinking, "Why was I laughing so loudly? He wasn't that funny." Or remembering the time where all my friends had to say was, "Jump," and without even asking, "How high?" (Or better yet, "Why?") I jumped and jumped and jumped until I got the slightest look of approval. And blast the times that I played myself down, whether it be my intelligence, or feelings, or disinterest, and for what reason, I'm still unsure. Those memories send the biggest waves of nausea; bigger than any flip, twist or death defying drop of a roller coaster has ever caused me.

So why is it that I do it? Why is it that while I am completely aware that I'm doing it AND sickeningly embarrassed that I do it, do I still do it? It seems like an awful lot of trauma to cause oneself. Am I really that die-hard of a masochist?

I hate to believe so.

More likely the reason is the undying and overwhelming desire for acceptance. Perhaps the desire for acceptance is stronger than that for even love, and putting on a false face for acceptance doesn't seem like that big of a sacrifice. Or maybe it's that desperate want for acceptance that begins the thin ice trail that we believe leads us to love. "All I have to do is reel them in, and after that, I can be real."

But thin ice very often leads to a slippery slope; once I fake the funk once, the fear of no acceptance changes to the fear of losing the acceptance. Fighting to keep the acceptance, the love, is a much more desperate fight; now you’ve savored that gloriously, mouth watering taste and you want nothing more than for it to last. It is far more difficult to lose something you craved and then possessed, than to simply crave its possession in the first place.

Which begs the mention of one of life's biggest clichés; all acceptance starts with self-acceptance. Without self-acceptance, all is for not, because no matter how large the sense of false acceptance is, it won't be stronger than the gurgling, foaming, drowning waves of nausea that will arrive.

Self-acceptance: better than Pepto-Bismol.