Who
am I? There is no string of words that I can use to define myself, but I think
that is the best definition. How can one
define what is always growing, continuously re-shaping, changing in such a way as
to defy category or logic? Over the past
three months of college I have come to define myself as an individual capable
of learning, re-thinking past behaviors and changing my future. Harriet Lauler,
authors Gloria Anzadua and Alan Watts and bloggers Kelsey Picciano and Morgan
Parker have challenged, enlarged, and resolved my sense of personal identity.
In
the movie The Last Word Harriet
Lauler says, “This is saying good morning, and what does that really mean? Please don’t have a nice
day. Have a day that matters. Have a day that’s true. Have a day that’s direct. Have a day that’s honest. A nice day, mmm-mmm. You’ll be miserable. [...] Have a day that
means something” (Pellington). This strong, independent woman
goes after what she wants while challenging others to reach their true
potential. She dares the people around
her to be themselves and to take a leap toward something they have always wanted but
never had the courage to grab. She understands
that “wonder is not a disease” (Watts 3) but the cure. All my life I have been
afraid to go after what I truly yearned for out of fear of making a horrible
mistake. Just like Kelsey Picciano in “Forging a Whitmanic, Post-Traditional,
Bisexual Identity,” I felt empty due to my lack of accepting myself, which
further prevented me from being who I am. I would hesitate to speak when it truly
mattered and stay in situations I knew I should get out of. I felt like my tongue had “become dry [from]
the wilderness [...] and [I had] forgotten speech” (Anzadula 3). Paralyzed in my state of silence, I felt out
of place not only due to my own hands holding me by the throat, but from my
unexplored culture. My mom, a single
mother, raised me, and although I admire her courage of walking away from
someone who did not and could not provide what she needed, I never learned of
my Puerto Rican roots. I am a latina who
cannot speak Spanish, a latina who cannot cook arroz con frijoles, a latina who
cannot cherish those sobremesas. You would never guess the amount of times someone
said, “No sabes tu lengua? ¡Qué vergüenza!” I hated every second of not being able to be
my entire self. I blamed myself. I did not feel good enough to make my dad
stay.
In
my senior year of high school this perception that I was the problem started to
change. Out of my curiosity for
psychology, I learned about cognitive behavioral theory. It explains how a
thought leads to an emotion which causes a behavior. For example, let’s say the
boyfriend left the toilet seat up after numerous times of my asking him to
remember to put it down. It causes me to think, “He does not respect me or care
about my feelings.” Upset and mad, I later lash out at him for the possibly
incorrect conclusion I drew from the evidence. If I could think differently
about the situation, I would act and feel differently. Instead of deciding that
he does not care, I could realize that mistakes happen. Since it does matter to
me, I could tell him how well loved I feel when he does put the seat down, that
even little things that he does for me mean so much. By sharing a positive
experience of his behavior and taking responsibility for my own, I initiate
rather than react in a submissive role.
Learning this theory helped me realize we have to be honest with the
people around us because most relational issues are due to misconceptions of
what is expected. In order to have better relations it is necessary to have the
courage to freely talk to our loved ones about our emotions and thoughts. It
also helped me understand that it was not really my fault that the man who was
supposed to be my father did not understand responsibility and commitment. If
he does not know me, I cannot blame myself for his ignorant choice.
Even
though cognitive behavioral theory helped me get over my problems with my
biological father, I have not yet applied this method to my lost culture. I not
only have to live with that, but I also have to live with being the only one of
my kind. All of my siblings are only half of me, which has made me feel out of
place. Just like Gloria Anzadua, I could not identify with the standards in my
life; I was on my own in a house that did not feel like a home. Reading about
Gloria's struggle taught me that I have to embrace myself as who I am, so that
I can become who I want to be. I have to create my place in the world instead
of waiting for it to be thrust upon me; I need to have the courage to say you are wrong and not
falter under my own weight. That form of family is not necessarily blood, but the
people who push you to do better in life and love you no matter what.
All these events occurring in my life can be viewed
as a problem that can never be solved, but in my eyes, they are lessons faced
and learned. They are moments in my life that made me who I am today. I may
have a terrible biological father, but I have an amazing stepfather who loves
me and cares about me, and without the hardships faced from that, I would not
have been able to appreciate and return that love as much as I can and do now.
I may not have grown up with my culture, but that does not mean I have to live
without it. As humans, we fight for what we want, and if you do not get it, you
did not want it badly enough to sacrifice and push yourself to success. There is
so much to gain from everything. Let us appreciate different points of views on
moments in life and let them help us grow as individual instead of tearing each other down. There is so much pain and pleasure in one moment that you just have to
choose which one you will embrace. The mind is your only limit; how much are
you holding yourself back?
With
my new self-confidence, I realized that “many of my views did not align with [others]
... but this does not make my views wrong” (Picciano 2). I have a very
different mindset compared to some of my peers. I take every moment given to me
and make it a positive. One cannot control everything. This is not a bad thing;
it is what makes life interesting. There is no need to dwell on a mistake,
mishap, or conflict. Learn the lesson, solve the problem, and move on. Every
second you spend upset about the past is a second you cannot get back. It is
understandable that we have to accept our feelings before we move past them,
and maybe I am being too harsh, but one cannot live in the past forever.
Even
with this hard-won resolve, I kept asking myself why I still was unable to be
defined. Reading Alan Watts helped me realize that “we need a new experience, a
new feeling of what it is to be I. Just
as sight is more than all things seen, the foundation or ground of our
existence and our awareness cannot be understood in terms of things that are
known” (Watts 6-8). I now understood
that I cannot follow others onto a path and call it my own, that I cannot tell
someone to point me in the direction I should be going in my life, that I have
to buckle down and make a choice, and that it is okay if it is the wrong one,
because the best part is we can always start anew. If we do not like where we
are, we have to have the courage to make the change. Being an undecided major in college you get
either one of two things: you need to figure out what you are doing with your
life as soon as possible or not stress about finding your career path because
it will find you. I just need to experience as much as possible so that I can
learn what my place is and what it is not. Alan Watts says, “He doesn't want to
find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game” (Watts 9). If I knew too soon what I wanted with my life,
the game would not only get boring, but I would not have the chance to grow
past the first layer of who I am if it was easily given to me. The most
important lesson to take away from this is to engulf yourself in things that
scare you, be afraid, but do not let it stop you from taking a chance on
yourself. You do not need to find yourself, but to create yourself (Sivan).
I
may not know who I am entirely, but I do know parts of my identity. I have “overcome the tradition of silence” (Anzadua
8); I have grown from pain and learned to embrace myself as well as every
moment given to me. I have to create, not follow, and I need to take chances to
reach places I have never explored. Reading Morgan Parker’s blogpost, “Invisible
Girl,” made me realize even more about who I am and who I want to be. Her
words touched parts of me that I did not even know existed. She says, “She
speaks not for the ears of others, but for the indulgence and dignity in
hearing her own voice. She speaks the statements, she speaks the movements, she
speaks for all the empty throats of the woman whose voices were drowned out by
the heavy lull of time’s ignorance. She is a powerful force beckoning us
towards a greater purpose yet still forcing us to find it on our own” (Parker
1). The respect for herself and for others is enchanting. Although I have much self-respect, I have had my
moments of weakness. I may be viewed by my peers as a “woman who is strong,
independent, and selfish in the best way” (Parker 2), but I let a man take this
all away from me. This semester I got involved with a player whose charming
smile lured and led me on to believe we had something real only to discover he
kept cheating on me with three different girls. I
avoided my torturing experience of disappointment, anger, and
hatred. These feelings hit me hard when they surfaced. I felt like
everything that was not being felt grabbed me by the throat and choked all the
emotions out of me that I was trying to hide. Still, it was better to blame myself for his wrong
doings than actually put blame where it was due. I knew that I was seeing what
I wanted to see instead of who he actually was, but I did not yet “learn to
listen without fear to the voice inside [me] instead of smothering it” (Freidan
11). If I wasn’t so caught up in trying to win someone not worth winning, I
would have realized that I do not need to prove I matter to someone who does
not even care about me. This moment gave me clarity to trust myself in the face
of adversity: “This is how we keep our tongues untamed and our feet planted in
the ground. We must walk [...] with eyes wide open, a heart impenetrable and
arms outstretched with fingers to grasp only what [we] want and palms to cast
off that which [we do] not” (Parker 2-4). We make that choice. We choose who we
become. One should not falter due to fear of speaking up for oneself.
Who
exactly am I? I am a girl with a big heart, a girl who is not ashamed of who
she has become, a girl who puts herself out of her comfort zone at the slim
chance of finding something amazing, a girl who is passionate about the
expression of emotions from others, a girl who became a woman. If someone was
to paint who I am, I would be the crease in a trumpet player’s forehead as they
slip into a dancing melody; the wonder in a child’s eye when they see something
for the first time that they love; the strokes of a brush from a painter who
has no idea what tomorrow will hold but continues in the belief that something
magical may happen; the hope in a mother’s eye when they see the doctor walking
toward them with news on her dying son; the tipity-taps from dancers who slide
to the beat of their souls instead of the music; the gust of wind rippling
under a bird’s wings in flight; the pushing and pulling of the ocean under a
boat heading towards its new destination; the warmth you feel in the arms of a
person you love. I am a sunrise and a sunset at the same time, bleeding colors
that have not been invented yet. I am a mistake, yet I am a lesson. I am
everything, yet I am still nothing. I may not entirely know who I am, but I do
know that when you are born into a world you don't fit in; it is because you
were born to help create a new one. Dare to change, dare to create, dare to
destroy, dare to be who you are. Never be ashamed of your past because it is
beautiful as you are beautiful. You may not see the value in yourself, but you do
have it. You have to work for it; be courageous enough to face your fears hidden in the deepest corners of your mind. Be courageous enough to find
out who you are, and once you are able to do that, refuse to settle for anyone
who does not see, accept, or embrace the beautiful being that you are and have
become because you worked too hard to let anything else happen otherwise. Never
stop working, never stop learning, never stop daring.
Works Cited
Anzaldua,
Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” (n.d.): n. pag. 1987. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.
Freidan,
Betty. “Women Are People, Too!” Good
Housekeeping. N.p., 09 Aug. 2010. Web. 06 Dec. 2015.
Parker,
Morgan. "Invisible Woman", Taking
Giant Steps, N.p., 9 Sept.2016. Web.
Pellington,
Mark, director. The Last Word.
Performances by Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, and Philip Baker Hall, Bleecker
Street and Myriad Pictures, 2017.
Picciano,
Kelsey. "Forging a Whitmanic, Post-Traditional, Bisexual Identity", Taking Giant Steps, N.p., 28 Jan. 2016.
Web.
Watts,
Alan. "Inside Information." The Book. ABACUS ed. London:
Sphere, 1973. N. pag. Print.
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