I Am Curious And Creative

A timeline may be linear, but memory is not. Fragments are sometimes buried in the dark center of a sort of memory cloud, and it takes considerable effort to retrieve those. For one who battles severe anxiety daily, allowing difficult memories to worm their way into the center of the cloud is safe. So that you may understand why I resist myself and drag those bits of truth out into the light periodically--and understand me because of it--I believe I should explain the way I think. I am curious and creative, a logically empathetic and idealistically cynical introvert whose most monumental obstacle in life is myself. Because of that, I work to counterbalance myself and end up with the mess of contradictions that make me who I am.

I grew up exactly 2.7 miles from the University of Delaware. Because of its proximity to the University’s international students, my little public school became a melting pot of their children. That meant my classmates came from all walks of life. I learned what a Muslim was from a Pakistani girl who wore handmade sarees to school. I learned bits of Hebrew from a boy who would practice it on the corners of my papers. In the second grade I wrote them into a storybook bound in a square of wallpaper by my teacher, a battle against wooly mammoths and cave people that she filed into the school library. Since age four, when I ran crying into my mother’s lap because I could not read and was terrified that I never would, words had been an intrinsic part of my identity. I desperately wanted to make sense of the stories being read to me by my mother. Bewildered, she showed me the basics and in a week I was reading anything I could get my hands on.

Unbeknownst to me, I had found both my escape and my calling between ...

... middle of paper ...

...d thrived in my classes, I have had mind-opening conversations, I have supported fellow cadets as they have taken the next step and enlisted in the military, I have met extraordinary people, and I have seen beauty mixed with the darkness in the world. From there my aspirations have grown. There is so much to fear within and without, but there is hope as well if one is willing to look for it. I have climbed onto the tightrope between my anxiety and depression and my dreams, and I am pushing myself as far as I can to reach them. The inner workings of the world around me is my passion, and journalism feels like the link between two halves of myself. The realization of the hardships to come means only that I must look back at the pain behind me and realize how much I have survived. There is a place for me in this world, and a place for my words, and I am ready to find it.