short(er) stories

10 years. (582 words)

In a decade, how much can you change? Do the physical aspects of your transforming body mirror the intellectual growth you undergo? If we are really products of our environment, then living in a constant, singular state will produce a growing body but a mind that plateaus. However, if all humans are basically the same, then it won't matter where you grow up, you will constantly be changing no matter what, just at different rates and in different ways.

Nearly 15 years have passed since I was born. I've lived in one house my entire life, surrounded by people coming and going, things changing left and right, and I know that 6th grade me would have trouble recognizing me now. If I think about it, my house is a metaphor for me. It is the vessel that carries the soul within. It will groan and settle and things come in and out of it, but the shape and what it's used as won't differ drastically (unless I want it to).

But on the inside... renovations are hardly an uncommon occurrence.

Before I was 10, the walls, staircases, door handles all had one thing in common: they shared the same drop of bright pink that seeped into everything around it. I demanded attention, and would not stop until that demand was met. Most times, I didn't know what I was trying to say or who I was trying to convince. I just wanted to be heard. I interrupted and interjected, opposed the majority when I didn't know what would the opposition be. It bordered on being obnoxious, and many times it crossed that line. Five years and a few paint jobs later, the pink fades into a grey, into a red, into a muted purple. I no longer engaged for no reason, I didn't want to just be heard, I want to be listened to. I realized that, if I'm given the chance, there should be a "why" when I use a voice that has so often been called too loud for my own good. And that is the main thing that has changed.

I do things that I always did, but now I do it for a reason.

I had a voice, but now I know how to use it.

I wasn't blindly blundering into a conversation for the sake of hearing my own words- when I spoke I expected retaliation and thought ahead as to how I would respond to it.

These shifts in personality happened over the course of nearly 10 years. As I aged, the vessel that held me grew as well. As the people around me moved around and settled in different parts of the world, of my world, I learned how powerful the small things could be. When to speak and when to listen. When to show who I am and when to let people be lead astray by their incorrect perception of me. These lessons and the people who have unknowingly taught them to me define and prove the art moving mountains subtly, and when a mountain could even be moved.

My house has not changed. The doors are still purple. The outside is still a baby blue. My room is still small. But what I've done with it made the inside walls have chipped the paint and faded colors while new ones take their place. Though it's still unfinished, it leaves me wondering how much more can change in 10 years. 

a/n

shut up. don't say it. i'm sorry. i haven't forgotten about you. i've just been waiting for things to heal, to fall in place. freshman year is...a time. 

more things to come. 

i love you all, guppies

-alex