Blending In, Blending with Your Ideas

I learned to blend in,
To wear the mask everyone expected.
I changed my voice,
Softened my accent,
So I could sound like everyone else,
Like I belonged.

I nodded at ideas that weren’t mine,
Smiled at jokes I didn’t find funny,
Laughed on cue—
An actor in a play that wasn’t written for me.

There were times I felt proud of it,
My ability to adapt,
To become invisible in a crowd.
To fit in, to blend with your thoughts,
To camouflage myself until I was just another shadow.

But blending in came with a cost.
The cost was losing my voice,
Forgetting my own ideas,
The ones that mattered most to me.

I watched as my uniqueness slipped away,
Piece by piece,
Until I no longer recognized myself.
The real me was buried beneath layers of everyone else.

But one day, I decided to stop blending.
I decided to be seen,
To be heard.
To stand out,
Even if it meant risking disapproval,
Even if it meant being different.

I started speaking my ideas,
Even when they didn’t align with yours.
I let my accent shine,
Let my voice be what it is—
Mine.

And with that choice,
I began to rediscover myself,
To reclaim the parts I had lost.
I learned that blending in might be easier,
But it’s not worth losing yourself.

Now, I choose to blend only when I want to,
And to stand out when it matters most.
I’ve learned the value of my own thoughts,
My own voice,
And I know they are worth being heard.