Well, the problem is that you are confining me to the chambers of a single word. I’m stuck in between the bars of five or six letters in a blanket of black and white. It’s suffocation. I can’t breathe within that one word. I can’t even breathe in a appropriate definition or a memory in time. I am not defined or represented by one word – Adjective, noun, or verb. You’re asking me to do something improbable…Let me try my best to explain.
As a student, I present myself as a blank sheet of paper to be marked on with red ink and charred opinions and stapled expectations. One word can’t explain the way it feels to understand a concept in its entirety or surpass your own expectations on a paper. As a daughter, there is always the necessity to fight for daddy’s approval and mommy’s compassion; leaving your elbows on the table can bring the dismissal of pride from their brows. One word doesn’t begin to describe the stability that they bring to your life after the hardest day with something as simple as a homemade meal. As an athlete, there are hurdles of pain, dizziness, and “impossibilities”; there’s no pivoting past the harsh referee of life. One word can’t explain what it means to be the one leading the others or experiencing yourself gain strength – not just physically, but mentally and spiritually as well. As a musician, there are the harsh crescendos of wrong notes and unharmonious sounds; a slight wrong pitch can be the death of a masterpiece and allotted, fierce commitment is mandatory for any performance. One word could never explain what if feels like to be perfectly in tune with the song and to capture its true meaning that the composer has hidden so well.
I am not limited to one word because I am all of those things. I am also a sister, a teacher, a gymnast, a romantic, a loner, a social butterfly, an attention seeker, a dreamer, a writer, a painter, a procrastinator, a perfectionist, a realist, an idealist, a pessimist, an optimist, a believer, a failure, a success, a loud voice, a scared child, a leader, a follower, a source of wisdom, a work in progress, sometimes an agnostic, as well as a Christian, a girlfriend, a superhero, a criminal, a savior. I am Jesus in His purest form and Satan at his worst. Sometimes I feel like I’m nothing and other times I feel like I’m the sun that that the world revolves around. I am a teenager split between worlds of ignorance and knowledge, rebellion and peace, hatred and love, pain and happiness.
But those are all just words. If you really want to know what I am, then I’ll try even harder to tell you. I am somewhere in the stars at night, although you may have to look a little, I’m there. I am the sun when it takes its rise into the sky after a long stormy night. I am the breath that you breathe when your lungs are burning and you finally come up out of the water. I am the reflection of the rainbow in the sprinkler that you sometimes have to squint your eyes to see. I am what is clinging to each tear that falls from your eyes. I am the wall you lean against when the whole world is spinning. I am the sweet taste of smores on a cold night by the fire. I am the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I am the wind brushing through each piece of your hair. I am energy in a young two year old and the wisdom of a old man.
I am the golden highlight of love and the burning passionate intensity that every person secretly yearns for. I am the solution to my own algebraic destiny and the only composer of my symphony. I am a philosopher always searching for depth in simple things and a radical cascading through the beliefs of Carpe Diem. I am the ocean at its clearest waters of simplicity and the sea at its deepest, darkest, mysterious blue. I am a book unopened ready for the world to feast its eyes on yet my pages are old and worn as if I’ve been read several thousand times. I am the color of a sunset – notice there’s not only one, but many, so I am all of them. Most importantly the gold, for I am the gold that is whispering silently for people to notice, to yield the way people take their lives if only for a second. I am the hand that steadies your shoulder when the world seems too much and the muted voice telling you that everything is going to be okay. I am the thing that motivates a person to get up out of bed in the morning. I am the will to live as well as the will to die for something bigger in the world.
I am not defined to only one word, you see, because I am everything that I aspire to be, everything that I have passion for, everything that my thoughts focus on at the latest times of the night. I am the things that make me the happiest and the things that I cry for. I am my ambitions and my dreams and my purest beliefs and my strongest feelings. I am my bravest moments and the silly weak moments that end up making me stronger. I am not my past words or even my past actions. One word can’t describe me, not even a hundred words could begin to peck behind the surface. I am simply me. There is no written definition for me in the dictionary or even on Wikipedia because my life is limitless and yet to be defined.
So, can you tell me one word that describes you in your entirety?