Seeing Myself... Correctly?

I need to talk about this, because I might be getting closer to understanding my struggles with self-esteem, self-image, and understanding how others see me against how I see myself.  So I'm gonna take a few step backs and we can approach this from what might be something like the beginning of the trend.

I've always just sort of absorbed knowledge and retained it quite well, so most people consider me to be a very intelligent individual.  Growing up, my parents always taught us to treat others with respect, which helped me start understanding etiquette.  What this leads into is that those qualities have kept me feeling like even when I was younger, I was... pretending to be more mature or adult than I was?  The sentiment lies somewhere close to that I think, or perhaps that time my friend told me I was a child playing dress-up as an adult.  I can sense the inferiority tied to that.

I don't know that I really feel like I have anything to prove to anyone, and if I have anything to prove to myself, it's to meet my expectations as a human being.  Yet at the same time... I do kind of feel that.  Again with that feeling of inferiority, it's a feeling that I assume upon myself I think. I'm reaching a point in my life when I need to shed the feeling that the world still sees me as a kid. Getting there though, requires me really evaluating if I really am an adult.  What does that truly mean?

People have asked me what would make me happy, what I would consider being successful. I don't have much of an answer, except staying alive and... well, being happy.  It's not to be grim, it's just that the beauty of life are a lot of things you experience, and that you get to interact with the tapestry of existence.  There is no goal except to never stop growing as a person and never forget to let myself experience the beauty of feeling.

Trot On Everypony,
Alturiigo