I Am
Who am I? It’s a hard question to ask and even harder to answer.
I heard once that who you are is very much dependent on your experiences. Of course personality, perception, and God’s voice have a lot to do with it too, but experience shapes you.
I remember the moment I realized I was me. I was walking down to the orchard where I liked to create “forts” by walking through the tall grass and flattening it down into different “rooms”. My dad “didn’t believe in mowing” because of a book he read by some japanese guy. Masanoba Fukuoka. (Side note, Masanoba Fukuoka was actually a very wise guy with expert gardening tips. My father was just lazy and used the advice that said “Don’t mow” but never actually followed THE OTHER advice that explained what you did instead of mowing.) Anyway. I was walking down towards the orchard below our house when the thought just… came to me. I am me. I am no one else, and no one else is me. I have my brain. My thoughts. My actions. I wasn’t controlled. I wasn’t controlling someone else. I was solely myself. And it made me think about other things. My grandparents I rarely saw. They existed even when I wasn’t seeing them. I had to think about things or else I would forget them. And in the days and weeks and months that followed, every day I would try to remember all the things I wanted to remember. I would think about my faraway grandparents. About my friends from school. About bugs and pets and toys. I would try to think about them so I would always remember. That day is a day I will always remember. I told my mom in the jilted, limited vocabulary that I had that I was me… but she didn’t understand. Years later, though, when I was about 12 or 13, my little brother was about… 3 or 4… I was sitting in his room late at night talking to him and he said to me, “SaySay, today I thought… I am me.” And I knew EXACTLY what he meant.
Self discovery. Self-realization. Understanding who you are through your own eyes and through the other’s around us. It’s hard to limit yourself. It’s hard to define yourself. In today’s day and age, more and more, teens are using social media to define themselves. Those buzzfeed quizzes. The multitudes of Kiss me, Marry me, Kill me, questions. Finding your personality type in this show or that movie. Defined by favorite songs and foods.
Who am I past all that? If I’m not a list of movies and hobbies. If I’m not Peach from Finding Nemo or Rapunzel from Tangled… if I am defined solely by my own talents, desires, personality, interactions with other’s?
Maybe it’s easier to say who I want to be. I want to be kind. Overwhelmingly, unendingly kind. Patient to a fault. Thinking of other’s first. I want to give and give and give until the world is more filled with love and I am happy that I have done my best. I want to be filled with self control, will power, strength. Superficially, I want to be thin. Attractive. I want to draw people to me so I can make their lives better. Through my actions. Through my looks. Through my smile. That sounds all very fruity and flamboyant and self-indulgent though. I want to do for others… but not just because I will make their lives better, but also for selfish reasons. I want to be perfect. I want to be placed on a pedestal and deserve it. I want to be right all the time, to have other people envy me. I want to be filled with pride at how much better I am.
I am glad I am flawed. I am so so grateful. God knew what a skinny waist and big boobs would do to me. He knew what perfection would look like on a human and He was wise to deny it. I am thrilled to be a challenge to myself, because striving towards being worthy of Christ’s love is so much greater then any worldly accolades I would get.
Who am I? I am filled with sins. Overflowing with them. Gluttony. Wrath. Envy. Pride. Greed. Lust. Sloth. If I’m honest… the ones I have been struggling with the most are Sloth and Gluttony. But if I look at my life as a whole, my biggest sin is wrath. I have a terrible temper. And it can often lead to violence. Not so much in my adult life. But since graduating from high school, I have turned the anger inwards when it feels uncontrollable. I will dig my nails into my arms, punch myself, slap my legs until they’re red. I once left a giant bruise on my arm from punching myself over and over. Why was I punching myself? Well… Because I was losing at Tetris. Yeah. I kid you not. I worry about my anger once I have kids. What if I lose it? What if I hurt them? Sometimes I want to hurt my dog, just because he hasn’t done what I want him to do… or because he’s done something naughty. And in my rational mind, my sane, gentle, happy self… I could never imagine laying a finger on him. But when Wrath takes over… it’s all I can do to keep from lashing out at him. I haven’t ever hurt him. And I pray all the time for God to turn my anger into patience and understanding. But it’s hard. It’s very very hard.
I know I cannot just be sin though. Sin is here because we were born into it. Because we live in a difficult world. I sin, but I am not sin. I am sinful… But I can also be good.
Who am I when I’m good? I am happy. I am usually happy. I love to smile. I love to laugh. I know that doesn’t define me from a billion and 1 other people out there in the world… But it’s something I like about myself.
My mother says when I was born, I smiled at her. I flashed her my dimple and she says she instantly fell in love with me… and spent the next 2 months trying to coax a smile out of me. But when I finally began to smile… I never stopped. They say that babies understand cause and effect in as much as they can understand if they smile and laugh, people usually smile and laugh back. Maybe it was my dimple. But I trusted the world from an early age. I knew that if I liked people, they would like me. Through a smile. If I compare who I am to who my older sister is, I think she learned young that older people liked her and were more impressed when she spoke. So she spoke often and a lot and learned and grew and by the time she was four she was spitting out 4 syllable words then most 40 years now adays don’t know. But that came with a backlash of other children not liking her… of adults getting irritated that she knew more… of a general feeling of her being a know-it-all… By the time she was about 6, she couldn’t understand why the thing that endeared her to people was now the reason no one (no one NEW, really) liked her. For me… a smile never did that. And Emily was always there to do the talking for me, so while I smiled and wooed my way into every single stranger’s lap… Emily was explaining what I wanted and when I wanted it and what I was babbling about… I didn’t talk until I was about 3, and I didn’t speak intelligently or without stumbling over my words or mispronouncing most of them… until I was about 10.
Then came Mr. Mac’s class. Oh boy. Did I discover myself in that class? Yes. I suddenly had to speak for myself. I suddenly had peers… new social groups… interactions beyond my family. I realized that I could make friends, speak my own opinions… I grew into my brain.
Who am I? I am smart. Not book smart or school smart or even street smart. I am socially smart. I know how to read a room of people. I know exactly who is unhappy, bored, feeling unheard. I can recognize people’s insecurities after two conversations with them. It makes it very easy for me to put people at ease… and so so easy for me to hurt them. I haven’t tried to hurt a lot of people. But the people I have… I have done well. That’s not self-congratulatory. That is my admission and admonishment. I think about people that I have hurt to punish myself for letting them down. For letting myself down. For letting God down.
When I called my very best friend the “n” word… I had NO idea what it meant. But I knew the moment it left my mouth what it meant to everyone else that heard it. But I didn’t back down. I had too much pride for that. And I lost her forever.
Who am I? Love has always been easy. I love people. I don’t always love them when they don’t love me. Which I try to work on daily. But generally, I love people. I haven’t always been able to understand how to love. Empathy took A LONG TIME to develop. It really started sinking in about my Junior year of high school. Other people matter. My actions have an effect. I was always good at playing the part. I’m sure I THOUGHT I knew what empathy was. But I didn’t truly understand until about my junior year of high school. And it had been growing in me ever since. They say empathy is the last part of a child’s brain to develop. Well, I can fully vouch for that. It’s not even something that can be taught, though I will do my best to try to teach it. It’s really something that clicks when it clicks. The biggest way I can compare the difference to being unempathetic and empathetic is this: Before, when I watched sad movies, thoughtful videos, provoking commercials… Something about dying dogs needing a home, or a little sister losing her brother… or the moment love is lost forever… I would mock it. Laugh it off. Even judge and condemn other’s who were moved by it. For me, it had no connection to my emotions. I couldn’t care less. Haha! Now!! Hoo-boy!!! If I watch a video about a horse and a sheep that are friends, I feel that clench in my throat. Orphans? I’m gone. Foster kids not having any shoes? I’m sobbing uncontrollably and trying to find a way to adopt every foster kid on the planet. It has that immediate impact on my emotional intelligence.
But does any of that really define who I am?
I am not shy, but I’m not particularly outgoing. I am strong willed, but not stubborn. I am faithful until it suits me to not be. I pick my favorite and I stick with it forever.
My favorite color has been orange since I could point and goo.
My favorite movie has been the 5th Element since I saw it on TV with my dad at my nanny and poppa’s house when I was about 9.
My favorite soda has been Dr. Pepper since I first tried it in high school. (Finally allowed to have caffine and drink brown sodas!)
My favorite person has always been my nanny, even though she’s been dead since I was 11.
My nanny. Everything I love best about myself, I got from her. My dimple. My weird deformed ear. (There’s just a little extra piece of skin in it). My blond hair (haha! Except towards the end of her life and since my life in high school… we both dyed it.) My sense of humor. My love of color. My love of all things small and living. Most of my childhood memories are at her house. Her joking arguments with my poppa. Her voice calling me, “Duckie.” Her saving up moldy bread so I could feed the fish and ducks. Her catching a baby rattle snake in a jar just for me. And ANYTIME I came in wearing something new, she would gush over it and without fail she would ask, “Does it come in my size?” Thrilling me to pieces.
She met my poppa when he was 18 and she was 16. She was standing in line to go into the theater with her date, and poppa kept staring at her. All his friends told him to stop because her date was going to beat him up. But he kept right on a-staring and a-smiling at her. He missed her coming back out of the theater… But he told me, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He went home and drew her face over and over. And like… 6 months later, he saw her again, getting onto the trolly. So he ran and jumped on it and sat right next to her and talked to her and asked her out… and pretty soon… They were married and moving to Africa.
The day she died, I got my first period. I was crying down by the duck pond all by myself watching the water… I thought I saw a big old something swimming around and when I caught it with my eyes again… I realized it was a little river otter. It swam around and around and then disappeared. Then I felt this pain and I thought I had to poop. And being the little vagabond that I was, I just pulled down my pants right there by the pond. It was a ways back to the house and I was worried about this pain I was having. And it was secluded and I was alone, so I just went right on. But I didn’t actually go… I looked down and saw a couple of spots of blood and I realized that it had come. I was a woman. I wasn’t scared. I didn’t feel weird or different. It was just a fact. The day my nanny died, I became a woman.
There has been a lot of loss in my life. My great grandmother who used to sing, “Shoo fly don’t bother me.” to us when we went to visit her. My baby sister who used to flood the bathroom and when my mom would give us lectures about how we needed to shut the door (so she couldn’t get in there to flood the bathroom), she began flooding the bathroom, and then shutting the door behind her when she left. She used to carry ants around in little lego boxes we would build for her, chanting, “Baby. Baby. Baby.” She drowned when she was almost 2. Fell in the hot tub when no one was looking. Lost my nanny. Then we lost my step grandfather who had been around my whole life and was the only reason I liked going over to my grandmother’s house. He used to make me fish tacos and always pretended to be surprised when I spent the night and was still there in the morning. We were always poor. Always faraway from the rest of the world. Always fighting with someone. My family loved God but always seemed at odds with the church. My dad smoked weed. My mom was a vegetarian. My siblings and I fought.
Who am I? I am this series of memories, these defining moments… these lost bits and pieces all falling in and out of my recollections. All seen through a filter and haze of who these moments have made me into. The memories of who I was and who I am, and who I one day hope to be, and who I one day will ACTUALLY be… And it’s hard. It’s hard to think past moments and see ME. As myself. Who I am.
I am Sarah. But I am not limited by that. I can expand and change and grow. I can morph and learn and evolve into so many possibilities. I am limited. But I am also limitless. I am a wife. One day I hope to be a mother. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a cousin, a niece, a granddaughter. I am a Pieces, which I used to think was complete bull, but now I think is kind of interesting. I am a liberal. I am a Christian. I am a consequentialist. I am an incompatiblist. I am more observant then intuitive… More feeling then thinking more prospecting then judging and more turbulent then assertive. Some people might say I’m an entertainer. I am sensitive. I am ready for conflict. I am pragmatic. I love children. I can be charming. Deceitful. Boring. Loud.
I am utterly, completely, unapologetically myself. The journey is not over. And I am still becoming more and less and moving… but one thing will never change… I will always be… Me.
