Second Chances

When I was in junior high, I dispensed advice like I got paid to do it. Filled with the confidence of a teenager who feels like she's lived, I totally used my brave and experienced persona to create the person that I ultimately became. This lack of permanence justified my transcient personality; I rationalized that I wasn't being fake, so much as being what I knew how to be. Like an actor that becomes fully immersed in her role, I embodied a thing that I never really knew, and the more I lived in the skin of that person, the more my transformation into her became complete and real.

At first, the two Marias were inextricably linked, even though they weren't anything alike. Then the line between them blurred and I accepted the version of myself that people knew as the person that I was. This happened many times, so that I could comfortably squeeze into whatever stereotype or character that my chameleon self wanted to personify.

Up until recently, my life has been a succession of events that reinforced the person that people already knew as Me. For all of my philosophy classes, deep thinking, and insight, I've never gotten over my fear of figuring out exactly who I am. I've always been afraid that I might not fit any of the worlds I so comfortably slip into. I worry that in discovering myself, I'll abandon the people who love me, and will thus become a bad person.

*****

The past three months have been a lesson in humility for me: thanks to the understanding of professors, I've been able to bring up my GPA; I've realized universal truths, like the fact that my folks don't know much and (due to this fact?) that I don't know as much as I let on; and I've come to the conclusion that my "tried and true" modes of living haven't exactly proven themselves worthwhile. It's been humbling to fully grasp and believe that everything I've accomplished is only the tip of the iceberg, that there's so much out there for me to explore and identify, that my journey isn't nearly as completed as I'd previously believed.

At the same time, however, it's scary to come to the conclusion that much of what I know to be best for me is actually detrimental to the great person that I can become.

*****

But something happened this weekend, and now I'm less afraid of coming to conclusions: I hung out for the first time with BKD, a twenty-one year old woman from Indiana who knows within the fiber of her being who she is and what morals and ethics are.