Who am i?

I am eighteen years old and I dream of flowers.

Of sunflowers, and poppies, and all things colorful. Here I find peace: in pretty colors and petals and sunlight in the morning. This is what is most important: the fact that I can place my feet on solid ground and find peace in the world. That I can lay my head on a pillow every evening and dream of nice things. The things that make the darkness less scary.

School is important to me. It is important to me because it gives me a way to fight for the things that bring me happiness. It gives me the tools I need to protect what I find important: the Earth, my family, sunlight in the morning, and the moon at night. Perhaps it sounds cliche, but I feel that nature is the only thing that has remained throughout my life.

I am a child of wanderers. I have lived in four countries in my life, traveled between 2 continents, and never found that the word “stability” applies to me. But whether I am in the north or south hemisphere; whether I am on an island or stateside, the sun is the same. Flowers always have color; always smell like freedom and quiet and dragonflies in the summertime.

My values are defined by the very few stable things in my life. My values of freedom of thought, that I can write and write for hours and still have something to fill a blank page with. I want to find areas on campus where I can be a free thinker: where I can write creatively, write opinion pieces, where I can do research.

I want to fill every piece of my world with peace. Those are two words that are pronounced the same: piece and peace, but so many definitions each brings. How long can human existence be broken into pieces before you lose peace? How easily does peace come to those who give pieces of themselves freely?

The day I lost her, the sun was shining. But it was not the morning I thought of, but instead the mourning in my heart. That is what I will remember. How my heart fell out from under me in mourning; as though the sun itself fell from the sky in the morning. How a piece of me was lost that day. That is a memory I will share. How her smile brightened any room. How I wished I had messaged her more. You do not know her; you will never know her, for her mind forced her to make a choice she never should have. I want to find places and groups on campus that encourage people to keep fighting; to keep living.

That encourages those who are struggling to find beauty. To encourage those who already find beauty to search for pieces of themselves in it. That is the beauty of human existence, I think. That we hurt and hurt and hurt for the opportunity to love. What are my values? My values are respect, and joy, and not fearing the big things. To find joy in the little things. Nothing should be deep enough that it cuts into your happiness.

I spend my time wandering. Maybe that is my curse. Perhaps it is my blessing. I think a little bit, that it is the blessing and curse of all of us. We are the products of our upbringing: I was raised by wanderers, so my feet will never stay in one place for long. How many joys that brings me: new faces and new locations and constant recreation. But how many curses it brings: that the only constant I will find is in change. That I will make friends only to lose them.

But their impact is something I will never lose. So perhaps that is what I value: friendship, relationships, even though I know they do not last forever. That what gives them meaning is how they serve us as humans: that we can love someone for who they are, for how they touch our soul in just the right way.

I thought the only soles I would feel were the ones in my shoes. How joyous I am to find myself proven wrong; to find souls that know me as more than where my feet rest. To find those who know me without having met me. So that is what I want on campus, to find those that enjoy deep connection. To find those that enjoy travel and nature and sitting and talking about books and media.

I know so little, and that is what I value. The fact that I can walk into a new room and find meaning in it. That I can constantly learn something new. So I will learn something more. I value places where I can feel like a team, sports or otherwise, where I can join others and find meaning in how our footsteps hit the concrete, bits of rubber that contain pieces of ourselves.

There is what word again. A whisper against my teeth. Piece. How much of myself am I, truly? How much of myself is made up by other people? I know so little about myself.

But I do know this. I will be nineteen in a month. New campus, new faces, new me.

But I think on September 19th I will go find some flowers. Poppies, daffodils, wildflowers, and bluebonnets in Texas.

Perhaps I will find a sunflower, and I will sit there. I will marvel at how the sun, the bright, “ever-lasting-for-no-real-time-at-all” sun in the sky, can be found in something as futile as a flower.

But what is life, if not appreciate the futile? For that is where we find ourselves. In the little things. In that message from someone we love, in that hug from the grass, in how we laugh without meaning to.

So I challenge each of us to do this: to aspire not for goals but for our happiness. And maybe that’s scary. I know it probably is. I do not know what makes me happy, truly I do not. But I do know what completes me: my boyfriend’s hand in mine, my sister and brother’s smiles after a long day at school; my parent’s voices when I want to sob. I know what fulfills me: filling a blank page, staring at a blank page, destroying a blank page. I know what guides me: dreams and grief and love, all-encompassing, boot-shaking love. I know what fears me: dark and nightmares and all those things that nip at my heels like a rabid dog.

Maybe that is what defines me: all those things that scare me. Do you scare me? I do not think so. Not anymore. No reader can scare me anymore: your opinions no longer define what I write on this page. But maybe you are scared of me? You find yourself relating to something, find yourself in sublime recollection, of how I weave your life together. Or maybe I am too egotistical, and now you find yourself lost in my words. Upset I have broken the metaphorical fog of not quite creative writing.

How much of your life has been made up of “quites”? You almost kissed the girl, or the guy, or someone. You almost told your parents that earth-shattering truth. You almost walked outside. You almost sent the message.

I have lost track of the “quites” that have followed my life. Now, I have learned to take them in my hands, scratch them behind their hearts like I do a dog's ears, and place them in the stream of lost things. Where my keys go when I’m in a rush. A dog is only rabid when it has something to prove.

I have nothing to prove, not anymore. I have no one to impress. I have only the blank page that I use like a paper towel to wipe up all the aspirations I do not have time for. I aspire to write, to succeed, to research, to get good grades, to make the people in my life happy. But these aspirations mean little, are pennies and dimes of a currency God does not collect in.

What do I value? The fact that I can go, right now, and sit in a field of flowers, and use this assignment to wipe the sweat from my brow. Or perhaps the tears from my eyes. Or the soot on my hands. The blood from the blisters on my feet. I can use it to trace the smile lines around my face. Press it into my dimples, that if asked, I will refuse I have. I can twist it to frame my face like my hair does on my good hair days.

And in the end, no matter what I write, it will always be a paper.
And, that no matter how hard I try to use flowers as a metaphor, they will always be just that, flowers.

You will always be you, I will always be me. It is each of us who chooses what pieces we give away, and which ones we guard, to give us peace. But in the end, when you look in the mirror, I hope you see yourself as beautiful. That you value yourself.

I hope you see flowers in your eyes. Because although I never have met you, I like to think you have them.

Then, leave your paper behind. Go and find some petals, trace them, and love them like you must learn to love and accept yourself. That is the memory I hope I keep with me forever. That perhaps I have encouraged you to love the little things. The little things in life, and the little things in yourself.

Because I will turn twenty, and then twenty-one. I will not blink, but I will wander, and before I know it, I will be older and quieter and maybe a bit wiser, if I’m being positive. But I will still be me.

I will still be me, sitting in the flower fields or my mind, or an actual flower field, if I am lucky. And there I will sit, a girl with pages scattered around her, never sufficient to encompass the beauty that surrounds her.

Never enough to capture the beauty in your heart. Or in mine. Or in the world.

So I will sit, and let sunlight stream through the sky. Let it sit with me. I will look across the field, and I will see you.

I will see you, reader, whoever you are, and we will lock eyes, or maybe we won’t. Maybe for once it will be enough for each of us to exist as ourselves, and not prove ourselves as someone more.

And I will dream of the pieces of me like I once dreamed of flowers, as you learn to accept that you have petals for eyes.

And there we will sit. A wanderer and a becomer, and there, we will realize…

The true value of life comes not in proving ourselves, but in knowing ourselves; in letting ourselves not just smell the flowers, but instead embrace them like sunlight.