The Consequences of Waking Up.

I'm having issues with identity.

As a child, my biggest concern was fitting in. In middle school, it was standing out. Now I'm stuck in this position where I don't know where I fit in between that.

Fairly recently, I changed the description on my tumblr to include that I am a 'borderline crazy person'. This bothers me. Sometimes I think I do things in some sick grab for attention without consciously recognizing it, and this is one of them.

I stopped yelling at myself a while ago. Sometimes I catch myself saying things that would suggest that I have a purely negative view of myself when truthfully I don't. Sometimes I look at myself like a mother looks at their child. I love myself because I'm mine and I raised me and sure, I've done stupid and ridiculous things when I was young but I can do nothing but laugh when I look back on it. I don't hold a lot against myself because I didn't know better.

I read this piece last week on someone explaining growing up. How every birthday you're asked "So do you feel older?" and you honestly feel the same. The thing is, age is a collection. Some days you feel like you're three and some days you feel like you're thirteen. And every year you gain, you have more experiences to compare to. Some days I feel like I'm fifteen. Some days I feel like I'm ten.

Fairly recently I've found myself feeling younger more often than I'm comfortable with. I can make that distinction. I'm not going around feeling sorry for myself, because I recognize what is 'wrong' and I'm actively trying to quell it. Younger emotions are bubbling to the surface, though, which sometimes makes it difficult as well. There's a reason children need guidance, after all. As a writer, all I can do save these feelings for inspiration. As the 'Master of My Soul', all I can do is get myself up every day and do what I have to do. As a teenage girl, all I can do is write on my blog. Those are identities, I suppose, but they're just facets. They describe pieces of me.

The only thing that fully describes me is Jessica, not the generic description. Not the bratty protagonist in that one book when you were eleven. Not your least favorite character in your favorite movie with the same name. It's hard to explain this to people who don't know me personally. That there isn't any one word to describe me. I hate sounding like I'm trying to be unique, because I'm not. I'm over that. But being unique and being different, just like every other human on the planet, is the consequentive norm.

I am quite certain that these 'grabs for attention' I mentioned earlier are in correspondence with both my quest for identitive certainty and misplaced maturity expected of me as a fifteen-year-old. But maybe they're just me being moody or inconsistent. I'm not the type to try to make philosophical statements when I still get upset that some weeks there isn't a new episode of Grey's Anatomy. Maybe this is all just a part of growing up. Maybe this is all just a consequenceof making it this far. Maybe I'm just so glad that I have the things and people around me that I forget to be grateful for who I am. Maybe that'll change.

Sorry that I'm kind of all over the place, everybody. I'm working on it.

Happy New Years.