how to feel okay

how to figure out who i am

The question everyone is wondering sits at the top of a mysterious mountain, waiting to be found by someone who knows what they are talking about. Who am I? To be honest, I do not really know for sure who I am. That sounds super deep and philosophical, and maybe it could be, but the truth is that to know who I am depends on knowing who I am not, and I do not truly know either of those things. However, I can try to piece together key aspects of myself and my upbringing to try and explain myself the best I can. From what I know, I am currently an eighteen-year-old girl just trying to find her place in the world through her talents in writing, and I have grown into a person who is almost who I think I want to be.

I have always just wanted to be loved and at the center of attention. Being the youngest child gave me the attention I wanted on a silver platter. I never thought about how it must have made my brother feel, and I think that is what caused most of our fallouts. I just believe girls are arguably easier to spoil than boys are, but I could be wrong. Anyway, growing up borderline spoiled made me super competitive. This personality trait stuck with me even to this day, and I am guessing it will stay with me forever. Along with being competitive, other personality traits I have developed include being loyal, honest, meticulous, determined, kind, impulsive, bold, ambitious, and cunning. These are all traits my friends came up with and told me. I am a firm believer in working for what I want because as I got older, I realized some people are handed things that they want, and I would rather deserve things than be given something that somebody else put more effort into receiving. This hard-working mindset mixed with my competitive nature caused me to be very hypercritical of everything that I do. How I write, how I looked, how I sang.

My childhood happiness melted about when I turned nine when I was exposed to female ideologies. Before that, I was picked on, but I never really let it bother me. From there, it got worse and worse. When middle school came around, I was merely a shell of the person I used to be. Some may call that growing up. I call it a robbery of everything I thought was pleasant. Middle school treated me well, however, but towards the end of freshman year, my mental health plummeted down again, further than it had ever been before. Now, though, that I am graduating soon, I think I am starting to feel things again. Happy, positive things. I will never be as carefree as I was a child because I now know the harsh reality that is this simulation we call life, but at least I can pretend to be O.K. for as long as it takes for it to be spoken into truth.

So, who am I? I am a lot of things and ideas wrapped up into one person. I am a sky full of stars that twinkle in the darkness, beautiful and mysterious. I am the blazing inferno engulfing everything priceless and historical of the Notre Dame, dangerous and heartbreaking. I am everything I never dreamed I would be, but maybe it is for the best that I continue down this dark and undiscovered territory with the hope that maybe along the way, I will find much more than just myself and who I am supposed to be. I want to be more than anyone expects of me.