𝑃𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐 𝐹𝑎𝑛𝑡𝑎𝑠𝑖𝑒𝑠

𝑃𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑢𝑔𝑒

To be honest I don't know what to say about myself right now, seeing as it's my first time under such a blindingly bright spotlight . I don't wish to be like a typical teenage book character, who is cliche enough to say, that her life is ordinary and pretty much boring. Which is ironic because I don't think any main character can afford being labeled boring, but I commend their attempt at modesty.

My name is Rüya Gastambide. Rüya is Turkish for fantasy and so all my life my mother, an Egyptian goddess herself, has made it her duty to remind me to take my life into my own hands, and make it a true fantasy.

Now I battle with the idea of my fantasy not truly being my own. I fear that like others I might just end up basing my fantasy on what the mass would consider the best. But I finally want to have my own thing. After nearly 16 years of trying to be like certain people in certain cliques, (just for the sake of fitting in) I finally just want to be completely different.

My mom is an Egyptian immigrant and my dad an American Mexicano. We live in a small town four hours from Miami called New City. We moved here when I was seven.
My mother and father met in New York and when they got married straight after college, they had me. When I was 3 years old my mother's father back home got really sick and had no one to take care of him. They had just got out of college and didn't really have anything keeping them in New York, so they decided it wouldn't hurt, to go and take care of my grandfather in Egypt. My grandfather, a patriot, refused to come live with my parents here in America. My mom says I got my hard head from him. Four years later we mourned his death and moved back to America.

Last year I was diagnosed with epilepsy. In a way that made me different from the rest, but not in the way that I wished. At first it wasn't that big a deal, and call me crazy, but I thought it made me special because I desperately wanted to stand out at that time. I later realized that seizures make you stand out in a not so good way.

After just a short time I was sick of it. The seizures got worse and I was in and out of hospitals. Trading different medication, with different side effects.
This summer I sat down with myself and asked myself, what it is I wanted and how I planned on getting it. Unfortunately I ended up just procrastinating my plans to actually come up with a plan.

I later decided it was ok not to have a plan. One thing was for certain, I was to become my own influencer. It isn't just about being different or standing out anymore. It was now more about self discovery and a path towards self-love. A very difficult path indeed.

𝑅𝑢𝑦𝑎'𝑠 𝑀𝑜𝑜𝑑 𝑏𝑜𝑎𝑟𝑑