Prose

Who am I?

written by: JustWaiting

Who am I? What makes me, me? Is it looks, or my grades, my quirks, or the way my brain is wired? Is it the music I listen to, or the clothes I wear, or the TV shows I watch and don't watch? What defines a person and makes them who they are? I've done many things that could define me, and I've never done many things too. I have medical disorders that can define me, and in some cases they do. With restrictions on life I can be judged from the sidelines. Or, rather, I'm on the sidelines being judged from the field. I'm judged for my talents, and scoffed at when I hand in thirty-six pages of a story or draw a picture of a band member. But, I don't feel that those explain me for me. They don't paint a portrait of me, they just represent me. They are only examples. Examples of a math problem so confusing not even Einstein would be able to solve it. Da Vinci would be stumped. Darwin would have a headache.

I am nothing, and everything at the same time. An enigma but an open book. I am hidden, but right in front of you. I am a paradox if there ever was one. I am one bright day in the middle of night. Like the one where the two dead boys got up to fight. To you, I could be a shadow, but to me, you are less than nothing. You can walk past with your Hollister shirt and American eagle jeans while I stand with my rewind skinny jeans and my So Be It top from Kohl's, and I will only laugh with my entourage whether they're there or not. You can look back and laugh at me who looks to be laughing by myself, but you don't see the people surrounding me. You don't see the shadows that create me, that are me, that laugh with me at you.

On the days that I am down, and I shuffle with a frown, it's only a day. It's only one turn of the sun, and one rise of that full moon that makes me so crazy at night. Or that I have once wished it would make me so crazy at night until a howl would rip past my lips and I wouldn't be able to sit still. I wished I could fly amongst the stars, I wished I could swim down in the sea. Now, I can. I close my eyes, I breathe deep, and I flap those angel wings attached to my shoulder blades right beside Orion the Hunter. I close my eyes and hold my breath and I'm swishing my tail and clawing through the water past the Sirens with their enchanting calls.

With all of that to consider, who am I? Am I the kid in the corner, the one who sits alone at lunch? Am I the girl surrounded by other girls, all asking what shampoo I use? Or maybe I'm the girl who has the black lipstick and black hair and black clothes? No. I look in the mirror, and the girl staring back at me is none of those things. The girl staring back at me is the girl who is insecure, and knows it, and that makes her more secure. She's the girl who sits with her friends at lunch drawing silently, or making snide remarks with the rest of them. She's the girl who wears black Chuck's and pink shirts. She the girl who looks back in the mirror every day and asks, "Who are you?"

I am me.