A young girl is told from a young age what makes an acceptable woman. We are told that we can do anything a man can do; gender does not define you. We are told from a young age how we should act, what we should do, what we should say. Are women not able to think for themselves? Are women able to find their own identity? We are told we must be independent, and not let a person define you, much less a man but often our voices are suffocated like a whisper in the wind, we are forced to scream from the mountain tops. As a teenager maturing into a women, I have been going through the growing pains of childhood and adolescence I’m still going through the process of trying to find myself in this big abyss but I have realized your identity does not come all at once but in stages and with the stages comes the emotions that hinder a growing child.
I am not the person the people around me claim me to be. I am confused because I’m being defined by the words of a world that I cannot possibly understand. I’m a young child that does as she’s told and has not realized the power of a simple question. I think not to question because of fear of being reprimanded; I have no emotions to the labels that are being placed upon me because I cannot understand. I’m confused, I’m a young girl who’s main goal is to please the people around her and therefore I am not suppose to have emotions much less show them. I am a pawn in this game of life. I’m confused about the process of dealing with emotions because I was taught from a young age that showing too much feeling is a sign of weakness. I bottle them up and push them aside. I’m reprimanded when my bottle of emotions finally overflows and they release themselves. I am told I am over-dramatic, hypersensitive, and don’t know how to take criticism. I’m confused; didn’t I listen when you screamed at me? I resided to my inner world where I was suffocating trying to gasp for air but I was never quite there. I began to acknowledge I would never be good enough and defeated I let you anchor me to the ground. I picked myself back up and put the feelings in their rightful place locked in a chest and pushed to the farthest reaches of my existence. After all, I am do what I am told and don’t dare utter the question,” why?”
My emotions always seem to resurface along with the new emotions I have not yet dealt with. I was being restrained; no one knows the real me they just know the carbon-copy version that all parents dreamed of: impeccable manners, a bright child with the grades to match, and a talented individual. I go on with my life without thinking about the emotions I have locked away and stored for “safe keeping”, but I guess it explains why I didn’t see signs of my oncoming rage as the chest found a key and began to unlock itself and let its contents free. I begin to release emotions that were kept locked inside for so long. I was confused on why couldn’t shut my emotions off: humanity, guilt, sorrow, and rage, the emotions I was reprimanded for, for so long. The chest couldn’t take the burden anymore. I feel more rage than anything because I feel I was denied the right to experience my emotions; the emotions that make up your core, the emotions that make up your identity. I raged on the topic of being told who I was by my friends and family. I didn’t fit in with either crowd. I am not accepted by the blacks because I was “too white,” but I am told by the whites I am not “black” even though I face the same injustices and prejudices they face. I was on the borderline of insanity because I was being told who I was because. It wasn’t me and they didn’t know the real me. I became enraged when my parents told me what to do because I felt like they were threatening my individuality, the very thing they deprived me of when I was younger. I refused to let them take any part of me without a fight. The people around me instilled a few characteristics of my personality through the rage I was expressing; they instilled in me the will to fight and the will to speak my mind and with that I have to thank rage, the mother of anger, for finally letting me express the emotions I harbored for years and hated the world for.
I acknowledge that I detach myself from my emotions and with that I replace it with rage. But without the journey, I wouldn’t have found acceptance in myself and with that acceptance that I wouldn’t have realized that people can’t define you unless you let them. I have accepted that finding my identity is going to be a never ending process simply because one grows and changes throughout life, and if you stopped evolving than you have stopped living. Although I have accepted who I am, it still comes with the pains of trying to fit in and understand my own skin. Accepting my identity involves me not let anyone belittle me like what was done when I was naive. I realized I am not a carbon-copy but, someone who has self-worth and would not give up that chance for the likes of someone else. I realized not to care what people think of me because if I can live with myself at the end of the day, that is all that matters. Perhaps sometimes I feel guilty because when I take a step back I seem selfish, but I realized I am not a selfish person for wanting an identity I can call my own. It comes down to the core; the core is just the question “why?” I want to be myself instead of feeling like I was living a hoax: a person I wasn’t meant to be nor wanted to be. I have accepted the things I cannot change because without those qualities I wouldn’t be the person that I am now: an independent, confident, a risk-taker, a dreamer, a protector, a confidant and others qualities that I have not yet had the chance to discover.

I am not done discovering who I am or who I want to be. I am along for the journey to embrace the changes that life may offer me. I wish that everyone can come to the realization it’s alright if you don’t know who you are and you are searching for yourself because you are evolving and asking the all too simple question “why?”