act natural

there was a time when I had no idea who I was, and was so desperate to be myself, that I piled on layer after layer of irony and iterations of ideas of self till it got to a point I nearly suffocated underneath

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being yourself =/= trying to be what you think is yourself

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how accurate do you think your perception of yourself is?

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she hadn't changed much, hair glossier, skin better - but she was still the same person I knew back in high school.

'What's the worst part about being famous?'

She thought about it for a while.

'That people hardly try to get to know you anymore. They all have a pre-conceived idea of who you are before they even meet you, which they're convinced is the real you. It's hard to connect with people if all they see is some concocted persona cobbled together from a handful of television appearances and... you always get the feeling that they're sort of performing? at least for the first few minutes... that they're putting up a front to try and impress you - or trying to play it cool. It takes a lot just to get them to just relax and be themselves around you. Sometimes it feels like I'm some kind of alien. And also I guess the pressure to act or be a certain way in public. Like, you have this public image to maintain and that everything you do is being judged and held up to an ever-shifting standard. It gets hard to be yourself when other people always expect you to be something else... and when all they care about is how they appear to you, or trying to get an autograph or a selfie or a juicy headline out of you, or trying to get you to like them. It kind of wears you down after a while.'