I love people who aren’t afraid to care.

People who don’t have to know who else is going to the party before they show up. People who don’t hide their passions for fear of being misunderstood. People who do things simply because they want to or because they want to give other people the chance to show up, too.

They are the reason other people feel comfortable in their own skin.

Remember when Taylor Swift gave her speech at NYU graduation? Here’s my favorite excerpt:

“Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively… I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things…Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth.”

She explained that being cringe is freedom. We do not need to be ashamed to care about things and people and experiences and being nostalgic or sad or ridiculously happy. And we sure as hell don’t need to be afraid of looking eager.

There was a time when I bought into the myth of effortlessness. In high school, it was shameful to respond to a crush’s text too quickly. I couldn’t dare seem eager to talk to him. I’d always make him wait, hoping he’d be the one anxious for a response (Reader, this did nothing for my own anxiety, when I was in fact deeply eager and I inevitably had to wait for their reply. 10/10 don’t recommend).

Somehow, this habit transferred to my texts with friends. I didn’t want them to think I was too eager for friendship. How dare I seem like I actually needed other people? I eventually became the person that would end the conversation first, just so the other person never got the chance to.

Because being left on read felt like pure rejection. And I was too young to comprehend the fact that other people also felt like me. We are never truly alone in our feelings, and my not texting back probably made others feel awful, too.

I’ve come to learn that if you keep people at a short distance for long enough, you’ll wake up and realize you’ve drifted much farther than you ever intended.

If you’ve ever been tubing, be it on a real river or a lazy one, you’ll know what I mean. Once a summer, my friends and I try to “shoot the Hooch.” We buy cheap inflatable ring tubes, tie them together with bungee cords, strap a cooler full of beer to the middle, and hop into the flowing Chattahoochee river.

If I were to loosen one of those bungee cords for some extra space between our tubes, I’d be fine for a while. We’d keep flowing and I’d stay with the group. But unchecked, that bungee chord will begin to unravel further as we travel over rapids, rocks, and shallow patches that are more sand than water. One big rapid later and I’d suddenly find myself farther down the river than my group. Beerless and alone.

This is what happens when we distance ourselves from people, from opportunities simply because we don’t want to appear too eager. We miss out on all the fun!

I’m learning to let go of the aloofness that tries to keep me back, mainly because I realized that all my favorite people are not afraid to care. They are simply themselves, and in doing so, they allow others to be themselves, too. And our world could use a lot more of that.