Who Am I?

I come from sitting on my mother’s lap at the edge of a duck pond, throwing goldfish down gopher holes. I come from running through red soil, staining my feet on the muddy, ocean shores of Kauai and the crackling embers floating up into the pine-scented, smoky air of Yosemite. I come from sorting candies into piles on the warm, shiny, wood-paneled floors with my sister and brother on Halloween and the soft hum of the rotating, floor fan on speed 2, humming long into the night. I come from sunny, summer days, releasing ladybugs into the hot, humid air and the vast, cold pit of water I swam through, nestled deep into the side of a tropical mountain I call home. I come from the sizzling of freshly-shucked corn and chicken-apple sausages, slow-roasting on a grill near the edge of a lake and the people I knew there.  

I can recall my past in a series blips and clicks that file themselves into neatly stacked shelves at the base of my brain. I flip through them on occasion as I try to play back the moments that made me; the moments that shaped me. On every shelf lives a different girl, each one moving further and further away in likeness from the last. I remember each with a sort of fondness and regret; the mistakes that were made and the lessons that came with them. I spent time worrying about what didn’t matter and ignored, entirely the things that did. Growing up is on odd concept and I couldn’t fully comprehend it until one day, just like any other, I was walking up and down the steep, streets of San Francisco when a mother with her daughter, of around 8 or 9 years or so, approached from the opposite direction. I didn’t take notice until they grew closer and I sensed the obvious pull of the woman as she cautiously tugged her daughter in close, and fast. You realize you aren’t a kid anymore when you are no longer seen as a child, rather a potential threat.

Then, when the makeup I thought would improve me, removed me, I let myself accuse myself, cruelly. I allowed what evoked me to provoke me and it nearly broke me, but I trudged on through to the next shelf which awoke me. Now, I love every girl on every shelf, along with her many past misgivings; regardless of how I’m currently living. However, that’s not to say I’ve liked every girl that’s come before me, all my insecurities ever do now, is bore me. I can’t know for sure, exactly, who I’ve been, or plan to be, but I know I come from pond, lake, mountain and sea.