When I was really little, I wasn’t like the kids I knew. I always had this sort of stereo typical kid in my head; I think it was based upon a hybrid of every kid in my school who was popular in the grade. I liked things that this amazing popular hybrid kid didn’t like, so I could never really be like them, but I still strived to. My life wasn’t like theirs either. In my head, they were all skinny and had freckles that looked really good, like visible but still subtle and not over the top. And, their mom drove a minivan. And they were on the soccer team. Alas, my mom drove a Volkswagen, and I only played soccer if I really had to, like in gym. Anyway, when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, I saw a movie. It’s called The Corpse Bride, it’s a Tim Burton movie starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter. At that age, every little kid’s favorite movie was something by Disney, or Pixar, or both combined, like Cars! These were never my favorite movies. The first time I watched The Corpse Bride, it dazzled me. I loved it. It was like an entirely different world, Victorian times, where you could marry the dead. From then on, every time I went to the video store with my mom, because we still had Blockbuster at that point, I always made her rent it. This didn’t deal very well with the stereo-typical child hybrid monster that my brain had created, which had now begun to act as an imaginary friend/consciousness, but I figured… I could be well liked by others, or I could be well like by myself. Childhood Me decided to go tell that fake kid I made up to leave me alone, and stop judging. To conclude this, because the point may not be easy to see, just follow your heart. Like what you want. Don’t let your imaginary friend be someone fake that judges you and wants you to be popular and have a birthday party at Build-A-Bear Workshop, like everyone else. And no matter what, don't conform to someone elses image of you.