By Isa Fischer 26′

Imagine a kenspeckle individual, a child who appears free-spirited, unbothered by society, unafraid to stand out, living in a different key than the rest. Imagine how adults complimented and encouraged all of the strangeness and told the child it was a good thing. Imagine how the child’s parents told them that it was a good thing to be different, to stand out. Now imagine how lonely that child must be and how confused they are by their total lack of companions despite doing what they were told to do. A child going through life always feeling like the real them was buried beneath a circus-like facade. 

I was that child once upon a time. 

I am still that child looking back at myself.

I’ve always been a little  bit strange, but rather than quell that strangeness, the role models in my life encouraged it. I was told it was good to be odd; however, this seemed to cause kids my age to avoid me like the plague. Adults rewarded me with praise; the more I stood out, the more nauseating my fashion choices, the brighter my false smile. Eventually, I strayed so far away from the truth that I had lost sight of who I actually was. I was stuck. Stuck in a lie. All of our personalities  create beautiful puzzles, but I felt like half of my pieces were missing and the rest belonged to somebody else’s puzzle. Should I keep living this life of lies, glittering as bright as the sequence on my clothes? Or should I dive deep into the unknown depths of self-discovery and hope that I don’t hate what I find? I’d been living a ruse for so long that I wasn’t sure how to remove the mask and what I would find beneath it. 

Slowly I came to the realization that I must begin chipping away at my shield of lies before it suffocated me. It is very difficult to enact a change when those you trust have always told you to “never change,” and to just stay free from society. Little by little, I began to sort out which parts of my identity were real and which were not. Which parts were inflated to the point of making them unrecognizable and which were hidden behind layers and layers of falsities.

There were small things such as my favorite colors, not including pink, my plain brown hair kept down to my waist which I always hated, or the fact that I strongly disliked unicorns despite often being found wearing a unicorn horn headband. Then, there were also larger things beyond physical appearances. How I interacted with people was not genuine; I would not let myself feel my emotions, and I never displayed any facet of myself that my parents wouldn’t like. I was not being my authentic self so I could not make real connections with my peers, or with anyone for that matter. 

As I began to strip away my falsities, I began to find my sense of self. Piece by piece, I uncovered bits of myself, hoping that I could fit all of the pieces together to reveal who I actually was. Sometimes, I found a piece that didn’t seem to fit in with my puzzle, but I realized that if I found enough pieces, it would eventually have somewhere to fit in, so I kept searching. As my own puzzle grew, so did my confidence, so did my connections with people, and so did my comfort in my own skin. I became more felicitous, and I was finally able to begin to live my life in a way that made me happy. 

Looking back at who I used to be, I have made bounds of progress toward piecing together who I am, but there will always be more to uncover because I know now that there is no such thing as a permanent state of self. The puzzle I am piecing together of myself will change as I do; I will find new pieces, and lose a few as well, but no matter what pieces I have, I do not have to hide the picture it creates. I will probably be a slightly different person in a few weeks than I am now, and I do not owe it to anyone to pretend to stay the same. The journey of self-discovery is never done because humans change as we grow, as we learn, and as we gain new experiences.