24 November 2014 nonfiction, "Who Am I?"

I am breathless.

I am young, and college is new, and I am free.

            I am unsure how to describe myself in an essay directed towards people who do not know me, but I suppose I should explain that I am in the dawn of my life; in a place where tomorrow could be the day I reinvent myself completely.

            I identify myself as a writer. My words are my personality, they are what carry me and lead me forward and guide me in the direction of the future. I like to think I have a talent for it; it is an extreme comfort for me to think that there is something out there I am good at without even trying. And when my fingers flow across the keys I can confidently say that I am truly happy. Even though most of my writing focuses on the troubling, on the things which keep me up at night, something about transferring my thoughts to paper gives me such freedom.

            Something about new situations gives me confidence. Not that I am willing to try anything in front of anyone with no worries about how I will perform, but instead that when I am put into a situation full of completely new people I am not afraid. I like to walk with the confidence of someone who doesn’t yet know who must be impressed and who must be ignored. I hate the hierarchy of people that follows me wherever I go, and when that is eliminated I am in my happiest state.

            There is nothing that terrifies me more than getting old. I am not afraid of my body changing, I am not afraid of leaving the past; instead I am afraid of leaving the dawn of my life. I am terrified of waking up in the morning and knowing that the potential ahead of me is no longer greater than what I have done in the past. Mentally I live in the future, and I do not yet know how I will be able to live that way when the future is no longer a comforting mystery.

            I suppose that I have provided enough stimulating information about my mind, and in reality it’s safe to say that the way I think and the way I act are two differing parts of one disconcerted individual.

            My name is Emily Grace Cashour. I have brown hair and green eyes, and I can be remarkably quiet, if I am put into the right kind of situation. My family is complicated, but then again, whose is not? College is what I have looked forward to since I began high school, and the financial strain it has put myself and everyone I love into has been almost crippling enough to get me to accept my fate and quit. But then again, I never have been a fighter, and that is a quality that if I could change nothing else I would change without a second thought.

            I want to help people, and I am unsure yet whether the aspiration for my own selfish success and financial comfort will overcome this. I truly hope it does not, but I cannot speak for the future and I do not yet understand the infinity or limits of my own strength.

            I have no defined dreams for my life; the dreams I have are too abstract to put into words, but what I can say is this: in my dreams my world is colorful and wonderful and lit by the stars.

            I hope that one day I will figure out exactly who I am. And I do not know whether it will be the world that will show me, or whether my world will show itself in the window of one person’s eyes. All I know is that I am a teenager who is ready for all that life will throw at her. Not completely ready, never completely ready.

            But as ready as I will ever be. And as I catch my breath just long enough to write this sentence, I remember why I began by describing myself as b r e a t h l e s s.