My identity doesn’t matter. My name doesn’t matter. I have gone my whole life unseen & unnoticed. What matters is what you think about me & yourself by the end of this. Will you think I’m brave, pathetic, desperate for your attention, or do I just feel alone like many of us do. Or perhaps maybe your outlook on yourself changed. Whatever the case may be, I advise you to listen to what I have to say next.

We are told as kids that what others think about us doesn’t matter & for some that is true. I envy that some because let’s be honest, we’re in high school & I am one of the ones who can’t help but judge myself based on what others think. I wish I could stop. I really do, but we live in a society of opinions & for some reason yours matters more than mine to me. Sick right? How I cultivate my whole life around what others like and dislike about me. Many of you walk these halls with this façade of happiness, clinging to the mask that you hide behind while the voice inside of your head screams. Many of you look in the mirror and only see the ugliness that others have projected onto you. Or maybe some of you just hate various things about yourselves that you wish you could change. Now I’m not here to call you out, I promise. I’m only here to call myself out because all the things I previously stated pertain to me too. I walk these halls while the voice inside my head tells me that the world hates me. When I look in the mirror, all I see staring back at me is the ugliness that I desperately try to hide, and I can make you a list of the many things I wish I could change about myself. So you might be asking yourself why I made this letter, and the answer is pretty simple. I know I’m not alone, and I’m tired of feeling like I am. We all go to school together, but do we know anything about each other? Does the kid who sits behind you in math class know about the pain you carry around in your backpack right next to your Chromebook? Is the kid who always seems happy truly happy? We all are so busy trying to mask our own pain that we don’t acknowledge the people around us drowning in theirs. Many of us are taught that if we let our pain show then that makes us weak, but I beg to differ. I believe that it is our pain that makes us strong. It is the pain that connects us all to each other, and it is that same pain that led me to writing this. I want to tell you something personal real quick. I have been dealing with mental health issues for the past 6 years. It is a battle I fight everyday to win, and at times I feel like I’m going to lose. At times I look at the world around me and see how cold and hurtful it can be, and I just want to give up. However for as much as this world can be cold, it can provide the most loving and warm feeling I have ever felt, and for as much as it can be hurtful, it and some of the people living in it can help to provide some of the best memories. In one way or another, we all struggle and we all feel pain. That pain that you carry with you is a part of who you are, but it is only a fraction. You have your whole life to become whoever you want, but remember you can’t get rid of your pain, so don’t try. Embrace it, learn from it, move on from it, and let it connect you to the world. Anyways, before I return to my untitled and unannounced life, let me just say this. Pain is inevitable, and I can’t promise that you won’t cry or have a breakdown again, but what I can say is for every time you cry, you will laugh again, and for every time you break down, you will build yourself back up again.

Sincerely,
Jayce Johnson
One Of The Unnoticed