I’ve never told anyone this before; I am Super Girl! I’ve lived an unorthodox life, and I’ve managed to become the person that I am today.

My earliest memory is from when I was three. I remember saying goodbye to my mom before she flew to Mississippi to visit her favorite brother dying from cancer. It was a humid summer evening, and after my mom left, I laid on the ottoman directly underneath the ceiling fan. That recollection is foggy now, with only misty images of that day, but I do vividly remember my uncle’s funeral. Halfway through the burial, my dad had to take me back to the car because I was sobbing. I don’t even remember my uncle and I had only seen him a few times, yet my heart still felt the sharp stings of grief. To this day, the look and smell of freshly cut grass combined with a gust of wind remind me of that cemetery in South Francisco. I always get a shiver down my back.

After my uncle died, my mom was never the same. I think that the traumatic lost and peri-menopause caused her to have OCD. She said that she went into a depression and locked herself up in the master bedroom for days on end. I don’t recall that at all. All I remember are the countless times that she would close cupboards or doors six times in a row or freak out whenever I went into the refrigerator without washing my hands. She had a huge fear of me “catching” something – germs I supposed – and because of this she kept my contact to the outside world as little as possible like it was a contagious virus. Unless there was an important family function that required us to go out of town, I was mainly kept in our neighborhood. Over the years, my mom became less and less paranoid, but I do remember that for a long time she made my dad and me take showers any time we came into the house from anywhere beyond our garden.

Of course, I was too young for the most severe part of my mom’s OCD to fully understand what was happening. All I knew was that my mom had something called OCD and it made her act funny. I saw her as a smiling and laughing comedian, confidant, best friend who I could tell anything in the world to, and protector. She was my world, and I thought that even with her silly little quirks that no other mom could ever beat her. I sensed that our deep connection and loving relationship helped my mom to cope with her emotional issues, and I learned very early on that true love transcends flaws. In essence, no matter how imperfect she was, I looked at her as the best human being on the planet!

Our relationship strengthened more and more as she not only served as my mom but also as my teacher. I remember that one day when I was really young, my parents asked me if I wanted to go to a regular school or be home-schooled. I thought something to the effect of “go to some strange place every day or stay at home and have fun?” – I chose being homeschooled.

I remember my childhood as mostly happy memories of dolls and summer rain, scarlet leaves and dreams, the smell of new textbooks (some smelled better than others) and movie nights with ice cream. When I turned eleven, though, my world flipped upside down. I got ill one night and stayed ill for two weeks. It was a miserable experience. I made it worse by blaming my misery on my dad because he did not pay any attention to me when I said that my stomach hurt. He just told me to go back to bed and not worry. Looking back, I don’t know why I felt so antagonistic towards him for one moment of “neglect” as I saw it. What baffles me even more is how I managed to freak myself because of a two week illness that was probably food poisoning and end up as a hypochondriac for three years. It’s hard to remember what exactly happened during those three years – vague recollections and emotions come back to me: scared, dark, nervous, lonely, paranoid, confused. I refused to eat acidic foods for fear that they would upset my stomach; tomatoes, especially, were a no-go. My friends and family members thought that I was developing an eating disorder because whenever we’d go out to restaurants, I’d barely eat any food. I was uneasy about digesting anything that I wasn’t familiar with or hadn’t been prepared by my parents. Also, unsurprisingly, I developed emetophobia – fear of vomit. After about a year of this, I reached out to my mom and told her about my anxieties. Lovingly, she did her best to guide me out of my self-inflicted misery. I refused her suggestion to see a psychiatrist, because I still believed that I was strong enough to overcome my issues without telling my inner turmoil to some total stranger.

It was around this time that I stopped praying. My mom and dad were raised as Catholics and, even though they had shied away from their strict religious upbringing, they still believed in a heavenly force that guides us and in heaven. I came to believe that a belief in myself was stronger than a belief in something could be totally imaginary. In a way, this marked my first real transition to independence and self-reliance. Without trying to sound egotistical, the more I focused on my own inner strength to guide me out of the rut I’d put myself in, the less I saw the need to rely on religion. By trusting myself, I built up my self-confidence.

It was reading Anna Karenina, though, that finally saved me from my internal agony and freed me from my emotional and physical suffering. It was the week before New Year’s Eve, three years later, when I was secretly trying not to fall into depression that my parents gave me Anna Karenina. I deeply identified with the parallel stories of Anna and Konstantin’s struggles, and the extreme results of how each coped with their instability profoundly affected me. Both considered suicide – Anna actually commits the act by throwing herself under a train and Konstantin finds inner peace with himself. I decided that between the two, I would most definitely want to be Konstantin. From then on, my paranoia slowly faded as I fought even harder against my worries with the new inspiration. Now, I’m proud to say that I am no longer a hypochondriac, love to try foreign food and even have re-acquired a taste for tomatoes.


A few years later, we all decided that I might as well get used to being in a traditional school setting for high school before going off to college. My sophomore year, I transferred to Stevenson. The past two years have gone by in a whirl as I have experienced so many new events; like the first time I tried cotton candy. I didn’t know what to do with the giant fluff of pink sugar, so I tried licking it. I was shocked to find out that you’re actually supposed to bite into it! Who knew! I also saw my first movie in a movie theater, which was The Great Gatsby. I made my first best friend who funnily enough has almost the same exact last name as mine, so we’re alphabetically assigned next to each other for lockers, assembly seats, and in the directory. I also remember asking my crush to the Homecoming dance and he looked me up and down and said, “I’ll have to think about it.” I replied with, “If you have to think about, then don’t bother.” Oh and during my free periods, I’d like to sit in the Latin room with my Latin teacher and play Sudoku with my boyfriend while listening to “Danny Boy”. We also loved to dress formally for fun and go to restaurants to see if the waiters would actually believe that we were famous movie stars. I remember dancing in the bleachers with my first major crush to “Teenage Dream” by Katy Perry. Ever since then, that song has become my anthem. I play it whenever I’m feeling extremely bubbly or depressed; whenever a major emotional event occurs, it’s my go-to song.

Music affects me profoundly. An early memory of mine is creating my first song called “Nightingale Dove” on a mini toy harp. I wrote a lot of songs when I was young and even sang on a children’s CD called Sealife Songs by Sandi and Stephen. Then, when I fell into my depression-like hypochondria, the songwriting fell to the waste side. In my early teens, I was inspired to write songs again when my grandfather suffered a stroke after surgery and passed away. For the three days he was in chronic condition, I wrote about it. What resulted was a three page long song that described the intense grief I felt and helped me cope with it. Not long after that, I discovered Taylor Swift and fell in love with her raw voice and simple original songs. I bought a guitar and took lessons at school. In four years, I’ve played around with different musical styles and have developed a love affair with a pop/country sound. Now I write songs about everything and nearly everyone I meet, with fifty total in my shiny black three ring binder to show for my efforts. Teachers and my parents have encouraged me to record them, yet I desire to keep them private, and I rarely share them with anyone. They are like my secret musical diaries.

In my secret diaries are all of those novel incidents I’ve had at Stevenson. My first year at an actual high school was filled with, what my boyfriend aptly calls, “culture shock”. I never knew what the F-bomb really was (maybe something the US used during wars?) until halfway through my sophomore year. Funnily enough, a year later in my history class, a girl asked “Is there really such a thing as the F-bomb is it just made up?” – it reminded me of the sweet ignorance that I clung onto and then slowly lost.

I tried really hard to stay ignorant and innocent but both seemed impossible in a high school setting. My ignorance faded away with every new swear word I heard and mistake I made. I once told my boyfriend that I woke up erotically every morning one week. (I thought that “erotic” was the same thing as “erratic”.) Over time I became accustomed to my contemporary knowledge of the teenage world, both good and bad. In a way, I considered it necessary for my survival outside of high school. I still firmly decided, though, that I would keep my innocence as untarnished as possible. I’ve been very successful with this by sticking to my morals through thick and thin. The hardest part is not feeling embarrassed – for the longest time I didn’t want to tell anyone that I intend to stay a virgin until marriage. I thought that people would consider me uptight or incorrectly assume I’m religious. After a bullying incident where a guy jokingly called me names because he figured that I was having sex, I finally summoned the courage to stand up for myself and my beliefs. I discovered that there was no reason to feel ashamed because I wasn’t like the other girls I knew, or because I didn’t “fit in” with other ideals concerning pop culture. Even this is hard to write because I’ve never been this honest before about my life, yet it is liberating to know that I can write this all down and no matter what, the paper can’t judge me even if everyone else does.

To sum this up, the biggest and proudest moment in my life was becoming a dog owner of a rescued dachshund/terrier mix which uncannily resembles me with its red fur, big eyes and enthusiastic personality. I have found myself rotating the roles of mother, sister and playmate for my adorable pup; he is like the sibling I never had.

I’ll never forget the day that he got free and ran away. I can remember it all so clearly and strangely vividly, like sharp screenshots in high definition – my mom opening the front door, my dad and I chasing after him, yelling and coaxing, the hot golden rays of sunlight in the late afternoon. Books say that you should never chase your dog if he runs away – you should crouch down low and call his name and bribe him with treats, Well, we didn’t have any treats on us, and Sammy wasn’t listening to our calls – he was heading toward a busy road and wouldn’t stop. It’s now all a wild blur of memories of cars and panic and me screaming “Sammy!” at the top of my lungs. Halfway from my house to the road, my dad’s bad knee prevented him from running, so he slowed down. I was furious. How could he give up at a moment like this? My frustration propelled me to run faster and scream louder. Alongside the road, I was able to chase Sammy onto the soccer field by my school. I slowed down and cleared my mind – I could easily catch him now. I dove and missed. He ran towards the road again. I became frantic and pleaded to the few students there to help me; to please help me. They stared at me blankly and shook their heads. I was outrage now. If my dog ran into the street, he could get hit by a car and die, and they were just standing there safely on the sidelines shaking their heads. I dove again for Sammy and missed again, but this time, he went straight for the road. My legs went faster and before I knew it, I was running down the road, straight into the oncoming traffic, yelling with the full force of my lungs for my Sammy. Cars came around the bend right at us, and I shrieked for them to “GET OUT OF THE WAY!” I shrieked for Sammy to stop. I was hysterical. My dog wasn’t well trained enough to come when he was called, he could get hit at any moment by oncoming cars that we couldn’t see, I could get hit, no one was helping me, but at the moment, all I cared about was saving my puppy. Passion and fury drove me beyond my limits of fear or reason or exhaustion or safety. I just kept going, chasing the dearest thing I ever had even though the odds were against me of catching him. My legs wanted to give out on me. My lungs felt like they’d burst and I was shaking, yet I kept up. I managed to stay a yard beyond him all the way up the road. I didn’t think I’d catch him after chasing him a mile, but that didn’t stop me. I wouldn’t give up without a fight, without using up all of my energy and will power. If I was going to fail, it wouldn’t be because I gave up; it would be because I’d collapse.

A little beyond a mile, it happened. Two dogs were off leash nearby with their owner and Sammy made a beeline for them. I yelled at the man to help me catch my dog. We cornered him while he played with the two golden retrievers, and I scooped him up in my arms. At that moment, everything flooded out of me. The relief brought on a river of tears gushing out and the pain and fear and happiness and fury and overwhelming joy burst out from me. I curled up on the ground by the side of the road with Sammy in my arms and cried. I cried until my dad finally caught up to us. He carried Sammy back home and left me there to await his return in the car to pick me up. I was too exhausted and sweaty and dehydrated and sunburned and stiff from all of the running to make it back without fainting. I sat there on the curb and cried for joy.

In all my life, I have never experienced anything to come even close to how I felt that day sitting on the curb crying with Sammy in my arms. I’ve never felt that many emotions at once build up and spill out of me. And in so many ways, that day is symbolic of my life and who I am; the fiercely determined girl who will chase life and what she loves against all odds. Even when I feel like giving up, I somehow manage to keep going. I don’t care if I resembled a complete idiot running like a maniac on steroids after a little dog. I don’t care if people gave me funny looks and turned their backs on me. I did what I had to do and I never felt more proud than when I grabbed Sammy and held him in my arms, safe from harm. I will always fight to overcome my obstacles and if I lose, I’m going to put up the God-damnedest fight ever for what I believe in and love.

I am Super Girl.