Will the real Slim Shady please stand up? I repeat will the real Slim Shady please stand up?
I have heard this phrase over and over again in my life, but what does that even mean? Just because I have blonde hair I am somehow affiliated with the notorious Eminem? I may have blonde hair, but I am no Slim Shady.
Because of my physical appearance, I can be a different person or even an inanimate object at any particular time of the day. It all depends on whom I talk to or meet. I can be Marshall Mathers, a famous rapper, who speaks his mind about how he feels, or I can be a famous Hollywood character created by J.K Rowling named Draco Malfoy, whose main mission in life is to make Harry Potter suffer. I can even be Mr. Clean, a bald man with a hoop earring, who is known to clean anything he touches. Strangely enough, I can also be a Q-tip, a utensil used to clean ears that can in fact harm them. I can find myself with many more identities depending on how creative the next person I encounter is.
Or I could simply be Mark Zientek. That may not seem as exciting as any of the above listed; even the Q-tip might have me beat in that department. I do have really blonde hair, that much is clear, but that does not make me who I am. My outer appearance is the image everyone perceives me as, but is that really me they see?
Throughout my entire life people have constantly been judging me by my exterior. Growing up playing basketball the black kids would always smirk when they saw my team full of a bunch of white boys warming up on the other side of the court. They always saw this as an easy win. These were my favorite games to play. They never expected anything from us and I thrived in these particular situations. Yes, my team would usually lose, because my teammates were intimidated by the color of another person’s skin. However, I would gain respect in these games, because Blondie could actually play ball. I came to a new school with new people and instead of people realizing I am shy, they see this blonde kid that they think is German and vote him “Most Intimidating.” So what do I do? I embrace the part. I got a haircut once and people call me a skinhead or a Neo-Nazi. I put on a few pounds of muscle over the summer and the next school year everyone is calling me “brolic.” I just think to myself what the hell does “brolic” mean? Is that an insult? I wear a wristband in basketball and now I am a tough guy.
My whole life people are just telling me what I am. I love every part of it. I would not say these names or scenarios completely define me, but they help build and shape me. For example would I consider myself tough before someone called me brolic or a tough guy? No not at all, I always thought of myself as a softie, more in touch with the feminine world and emotions, growing up in a house with two younger sisters, my mother and a female dog, honestly what do you expect? I never had those father son moments that you see in movies. I never even had the infamous sex talk with my dad. I always dreaded the day my mom would bring it up. So I took this nickname and embraced it. I figured if I look the part I should be a little tougher anyway. I fell in love with lifting weights and getting big. But I will always be a lover not a fighter. People always call me Eminem or the Real Slim Shady, so I go with it and make it my ringtone--if you don’t believe me call me now. Others call me a Nazi, so I tell them it’s not my fault Hitler loved my type and described me as the perfect child. It annoys me, but if you show people that these things bother you they will keep doing them. You just have to embrace these and have fun with it.
The irony of all of this is people are convinced they know exactly who I am, a tough guy, slim shady wannabe, basketball player who is intimidating. Newsflash: how can you know who I am if I still do not know who I am? I try and figure out who I am every day. I am a complex individual. I value being a loner throughout life, but at the same time I love my few and selected friends, even if some of them do not fully understand me. My intimidating factor people think I have may be confused with a sort of shyness per se. It is not that I am shy in big groups of people, I’d just rather not deal with them or be involved. I feel like I am at least thirty trapped in a nineteen-year-old body. I value hard work at such a young age and my work ethic is different than that of most kids I know. I hate immaturity, but at the same time I can be immature, so that makes me a hypocrite.
I sit in bed during the day or night and ponder about me, myself and I.
I’ve been trying to figure out where my life will take me, so I ended up transferring schools , all because of the quest of chasing a dream that I would love to obtain, but time is running out every minute of the day. I feel trapped. I am slowly isolating myself more and more thinking deeply about life, as the pressure of this year is closing in on me and becoming more and more of an immense reality, rather than a distant objective.
I think we are going to have a problem here.