My Mind

To some, I am an outspoken girl who isn't quite like anyone else. To others, I am a silent girl who just isn't like everyone else. But I really am just the same. I'm not different, I'm not special. I put my layers on a little thicker with different holes here and there, but I am the same confusing, complicated organism.

I am a high school freshman. I play violin. I am on the basketball team. If a stranger asked me to tell them about myself, I very well could be the same person as many across the country. I am a variation, nothing more. Sure, I don't go to 'their' parties, but I am just a name below them on the roll sheet. Sure, I don't ask for attention in quite the same ways as 'they' do, but I am also just 14 and I am greedy with other people's eyes.

I need validation from my peers every once in a while, if only in small ways. I need someone to talk to when my imagination takes logic in its gaping arms. My mind is loud about different things, but I am no smarter than them. I am similar: I need, I laugh, I get jealous, I feel inadequate. I wonder, and dream, and fall, and try to start fresh. I reinvent myself when I'm not happy with the way I see and feel my perceived world. Music means different things to me than it may to someone else. But we can both love it.

'They' are not are not all the same. Those you make generalizations about and assume are different differently are not somehow except from original thought and a unique outlook on their experiences. We are human, and as baffling as it is, we can all be wired the same and have completely different things make us tick. We all have different editing processes and editors and are all authors with inescapably different voices.

My voice is going to tell my story like no one else could, and that's how I, the student, can make the world, the teacher, proud.