ok this is real random...and old. this happened to me back in like...11th grade. looong time ago.

so there was this kid. let's call him Dan (he's chinese..real name isn't Dan lol). anyway, i played violin for like five years (quit a while ago) and he was my stand partner in orchestra. concert master, best violinist in the orchestra, blah blah blah. anyway, his friend's worshiped him (as a joke). they'd call him an 'asian god' and all that stuff. and that was cool.

except not everyone knew it was a joke. i uncovered some old conversations over text and here it is:

J: the fact that people like 'worship' (ik it's a joke) you, does that ever burden you

D: so physically and emotionally it has really burdened me. like the expectations are so high...unrealistically high. and worship brings up some rly awkward topics. at the same time its put me on this sort of platform and ive been able to reap the opportunities and rewards. but the real problem is much more subtle cuz i feel like my being worshipped it gradually making me more arrogant...don't get it confused with narcissism. but i feel like that fake image of me is like pulling my real self closer. if u get what i mean and so my friends like ______ i feel are getting more annoyed with my being worshipped.

J: ohhh

D: alright here's where it gets kinda delusional and weird

J: ok

D: alright so i came into 7th grade still a normie. like one of those cool white kids. but i had a whole bunch of asian friends and i was so confused as to who i should hang out with....and i was really torn apart. i guess i just chose the asians cuz i was almost scared of losing them. and now with this whole worship thing a bunch of people follow me around and there's my carpool with like the other normies and they're like "you should get better friends"

J: WHAT?

D: cuz some of the people worshipping me are my best friends but at the same time i realize them following me around is kinda absurd and irrational and just recently its like the asians are shunning me away. like _______ keeps on saying

"i feel like dan is turning into a cool white kid"

"like what he wears and how he talks"

"and when he walks around campus all the cool kids are like 'dan come to the basketball game plz we need u to win'"

and im like okokok jeez calm down. idk if it's jealousy. or if im just being an arrogant prick

anyway, the point of that was that...not everyone can be perfect. throughout my friendship with dan i realized that really, nobody is perfect. even this kid, who was worshipped by everyone. 

i also realized how stressed out dan was. he'd show up to school with bruised knuckles from punching his music stand, his grades dropped like flies, he couldn't play basketball as well as he used to. he was spiraling out of control and it took me so so long to realize why.

he had all this pressure on his shoulders and all of these fake images of himself swimming around. at some point he just wanted to be loved for who he really was, not this fake image that his friends had created.

his parents expected things, his friends expected things, his peers expected things, and he just couldn't meet their expectations. 

he had been programmed to be a machine. to be perfect. but he wasn't, and everytime he messed up, he beat himself up about it. he wanted to be perfect, that image that everyone had projected of him. 

dan couldn't realize that he wasn't perfect. and everytime something reminded him of that...he hurt himself. he could do anything if he wanted to. just...not everything.

expectations crush you. especially when you can't meet them. expectations make people starve, cut, hurt and kill themselves, but for some reason everyone's still trying to run around to meet them. 

i managed to get into contact with dan today. and he said:

"you need to learn when an expectation is unrealistic, before you destroy yourself to meet it"