How To Be A Human

Reflections on how I learned how to be the way I am

Did anyone else ever look at the world and people around them and wonder…how do they do it?

Like how do other people, exist and function and have a life?

For as long as I can remember, I’ve looked at people and thought—how are you doing that?
Sometimes it was the big stuff—winning awards, traveling, landing some glamorous job. But more often it was the little things that really got me: like raising their hand in class, joining a conversation they weren’t specifically invited into, or just being at ease and having fun.

I’ve felt like I have been in a full body clench since AT LEAST 1998.

The child version of me was convinced that everyone else had a handbook on how to exist in this world—and mine got lost in the mail. So I did what any deeply confused, socially anxious overthinker would do: I watched. I copied. I tried to blend in.

But no matter how well I mimicked what it looked like to belong, I never quite felt it.

When I say I tried to copy people, I mean it literally started with handwriting.

I spent hours mimicking my mom’s cursive because it looked so elegant—like she knew what she was doing just by the way her Gs looped. Then one day I saw a classmate’s bubbly, popular-girl letters, and boom—suddenly I was writing like I dotted my i’s with hearts and had a locker full of Victoria Secret body spray. A few months later, a different girl started writing in all caps, so naturally, I also wrote in all caps.

These handwriting trials were me trying on new identities. There was something undeniably alluring about the girls I copied. Beyond the penmanship, they had something I wanted… though I couldn’t quite name it.

Eventually, I settled into a handwriting that was mostly mine—a mix of my mom’s curves and a few of my own quirks. But even now, when I see a handwriting style I like, my first instinct is still, “Ooh, I want to be that now.”

Of course, copying handwriting only gets you so far when what you’re really craving is connection.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years, I cycled through friendships like clockwork—roughly every two years, a full refresh. I was deeply envious of people with lifelong besties, camp friend reunions, and sports teams to bond with. I wanted that kind of belonging so badly, but I just… didn’t know how to do it.

My sister likes to say I just had terrible taste in friends. She’s not entirely wrong—but also, I was no picnic myself. I was jealous, confrontational, and desperate to be liked, which is not the vibe people tend to stick around for. And to be fair, we were all just kids with half-cooked frontal lobes and way too many hormones, so—no hard feelings on my end. (I hope none on theirs, either.)

Back then, I thought “connecting” meant spilling every single traumatic detail of my life to someone within the first two hours of knowing them.
Like, here is my entire backstory, please don’t be surprised when I have a meltdown in three weeks.
In my mind, this was just being honest and giving people “the full picture.” In reality, it was probably just a way to self-fulfill the story I carried—that everyone leaves me anyway.

You know what else gets in the way of connecting with people?
Mental health issues. Turns out, a lot of them are literally defined by difficulty relating to others. Womp womp.

Social anxiety had (still has really) me in a chokehold for most of my life. Any social event—school activity, group hang, class presentation—felt excruciating. I’d be the one hovering near the edge of the room, eyes down, waiting for someone to talk to me. And if you’ve ever seen my face in neutral mode… let’s just say I don’t exactly radiate “approachable.”

I spent years studying people like it was my part-time job. I watched how they laughed, when they jumped into conversations, how their voices shifted depending on who they were talking to. Then I’d try to mimic it—same cadence, same facial expressions, same casual turns of phrase—but I never quite got it. It always felt like I was doing an impression of a human and that every one could see right through it.

I remember once, as a teenager, I signed up for a new activity—capoeira. I showed up three weeks in a row. Got to the door. Peeked inside. And each time, I saw a room full of people who belonged there—laughing, chatting, casually stretching like they’d done it a hundred times.
And each time, I froze. I couldn’t make myself walk in.
After the third week, I sat in the community center lobby and called my mum crying, asking her to take me out of the class. Not because I didn’t want to go—but because I was convinced they’d all be able to tell I didn’t belong. That I was this weirdo trying to sneak in.

That’s the part people don’t always get about social anxiety—it’s not just shyness. It’s being so aware of how out of place you feel that even being perceived feels unbearable.

Things didn’t magically get easier when I left home for university—but I got very well acquainted with social interaction’s best lubricant: alcohol.

Suddenly, with a little liquid courage, I could walk into the room. I could talk to strangers, laugh at jokes I didn’t understand, even initiate conversations without feeling like my soul was about to leave my body. For about three years, I managed to convincingly play the role of someone who was fun, cool, even—much to literally everyone’s surprise—the life of the party.

(Yes, I too cringe at the “brag”, but I am trying to make a point dammit)

It helped that in university, I got to curate my social circles a bit more. No more being stuck in classes or clubs with people I had nothing in common with. I found friends who enjoyed the same things I did (in this case dubstep, cigarettes and sleeping through 8am classes) and I wasn’t trying to impress the cool kids anymore—I was trying to find my people.

And yet, even as I was building these little pockets of belonging, there was still this voice in the back of my head whispering, “You’re in over your head. They don’t really know you. And if they did… would they still want you here?”

So yeah. College was better. But it wasn’t exactly healing. It was just a shinier disguise with dim lighting and cheaper wine.

After university, I found myself juggling a low-paying carpenter apprenticeship and needing something part-time to keep the lights on (and fuel my cigarette habit). So, I picked up a gig at a health food café. I had worked in cafés before so it was nothing revolutionary.

Now, let me set the scene: I was coming from construction sites, where I sorta fit in—blue collar, grit, sawdust in my boots, the whole thing. It was a nice contrast to the academic world where I’d always felt a bit out of place.

But this café? It was full of people I internally labeled as the cool girls. You know the ones: impossibly pretty, effortlessly stylish, wearing cool band shirts and talking about wild adventures like it was normal. My game plan? Keep my head down, make the smoothies, clock out. Zero social expectations. Just vibes and minimum wage.

Instead, something unexpected happened.

I connected. Really connected.
No alcohol. No performance. No emotional trauma PowerPoint presentation.
If anything, I tried to hide my shit—but these women—these beautiful, glowy humans—were kind, curious, and genuine. And they took an interest in me. The actual me.

Working there cracked something open. I didn’t just start forming real friendships—I also started caring more about my wellbeing. I was surrounded by people who talked about rest, nourishment, nervous systems, and gut health... like that was just casual lunch break talk. That environment nudged me toward a path of wellness and self-awareness that I had only dipped my toes into before—but now, I had permission and encouragement to dive.

I developed some confidence. I started shining a bit brighter. I stopped constantly looking around to see how everyone else was existing—and started actually existing a little myself.

Also, let’s not discount the sheer amount of practice you get in a customer-facing role. I talked to so many people every day that, while socializing never became natural, I definitely learned how to flex those muscles. Small talk became a skill, not a mystery. It was like emotional weightlifting (along with my actual physical weightlifting), five (or more) days a week.

But like all good things, it had to come to an end.

That café job gave me so much—belonging, community, an introduction to a career in wellness, and the realization that maybe people could, in fact, like me for me.
But it also gave me a big ol’ case of burnout. I was a workhorse. Always have been. Turns out, even in your dreamiest workplace, overextending yourself will still slap.

And the truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever stop mirroring the people around me. It’s just part of how I’m built. So when I left that job and moved across the country, I found myself once again looking around and thinking,
“Man. I don’t belong here either.”

But this time, it was different.

Because by now, I’d picked up actual skills. Social muscles I’d flexed enough times that they didn’t immediately give out. A bit of confidence. A better sense of my own rhythms. I wasn’t starting from scratch.
It wasn’t easy—but it wasn’t foreign anymore.
I also brought some friends with me. I wasn’t leaving relationships behind—I was continuing to nurture them, even from a distance.

And maybe it’s true what they say—when you hit your 30s, the stuff from your 20s starts to matter less. You stop caring (as much) about fitting in, and start caring more about fitting yourself.

Maybe I’ve finally built enough self-awareness and baseline acceptance that I don’t fight my weird little human experience as hard anymore.

…Or maybe I’m just too tired now to put on a performance.

Either way, it’s a kind of peace I’ll take.