When I moved to my new school, just as my fetus elementary years ended, I was excited. Beyond ecstatic, actually. I stalked the school’s facebook page and watched all their youtube videos, stuffing my exhilarated face and pointing my stubby fingers at the screen, pointing out places I’d soon be studying, eating and playing in. There was a permanent clock nestled in my head, the slim arrows ticking away to when the first day of school would start. I was so happy, so gleeful, my whole life taken over by the fantasy of my new school.

It wasn’t like my school before was bad, nor did I hate it with every part of my soul, but I was excited for a change. New classmates, new teachers, new things to learn.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Immediately, I felt like an outcast. An outsider looking through murky windows, palms pressed against the glass to try and touch what was inside. I was alone, isolated, and the shrill snickers behind my back didn’t help me either.

They didn’t like my imperious actions, ignorant scowls and demanding personality. They didn’t want to be challenged from the norm, neutral classmates that didn’t care about anything but themselves. But, I, on the contrary, believed that justice for was on my hands for the whole classroom; I was the judge, jury, and victim. Everything they did I took personally, from changing seats when they weren’t allowed to to talking too much in class. I became a second teacher—an overbearing and mustard scented classmate that didn’t know her place.
Isn’t it hard to imagine me acting like that now?

I am a person whose eyes are always brimmed with tears, blistering my cheeks when they escaped. When they ran rapid invisible lines through my pink flesh they screamed to the others that I was weak—I was incapable because I can create moisture with my brown irises.

I felt more than I should have, I fell at the tiniest push, and I quickly became the butt of all jokes. In the next few months I learned how to hate myself. I hated myself deeply—I hate myself the way Romeo and Juliet love each other. I loathed every cell in my body; I slipped poison into all of my synapses.

I hated how no one could keep a conversation with me, I hated how when they whisper they made it so awfully clear that it was I who they were giggling about—they didn’t even have the decency to break my soul when my back was turned. I hated the way I became that kid, the one in the movies, the one stuck to the red bricked wall as team leaders picked their fellow teammates, each one’s eyes swiftly dodging my glossy stare. 

It nearly impossible to describe how I felt—how I feel now. It hurts when you feel so unnecessary and unneeded. You feel so erasable and replaceable, like the dead autumn leaves flying away on the wind to a painless death. Like if your death would not change a thing, not even a single piece of dust will quiver from its spot in response your absence. I felt so redundant, an overused and ignored word on an essay page filled with 2000 others—because after two years, constantly switching cliques and best friends, never really feeling the fullness that I had come to this school with, I finally was drained. I juggled my life while walking a tightrope made of glass string, trying so hard not to break like the glass I stepped on so cautiously and to fall into the dark oblivion below me.
And I hated it so much.

My old school, those good old days—the memories played over and over in my head like a broken record. They made me dizzy, the nostalgia filling me to the point where I wanted to throw up. I missed my best friend, her warm smile and the way she would soothe me when the tears I overused would spill—I miss the brightness of my classmates, how their bubbly personalities could merge with the quietest. I miss the comfort of the fart and crayon scented classroom would always provide me. I felt safe. I felt wanted.

The summer before 7th grade—a hectic summer that I can barely remember any details from—was the summer I took a quick visit to my old school. I went with my two old friends, my best friends, a luxury I was not allowed at the school I now attended. I remember walking through those familiar halls, the halls that once were filled with my footsteps and echoing cheery laughter, the halls that I spent so much of my life in, so much of my time in. I remember looking into the classes, remembering funny stories and how I was elected as treasurer of student council, even though I could barely do any math.

I cried.

Old teachers that I knew surrounded me, wrapping their familiar arms around my body while my friends leaned into me from my back, smiling and telling me I’ll be just fine, this place wasn’t going anywhere.

I cried because I wanted it all back.

There was such a deep amount of despair lodged in my throat that I couldn’t even tell them, thank you. I could just give them a look of sincere gratitude and a little shake of my head, hoping, praying, that they’d understand what I meant.

That was the moment I realized I wasn’t who I was anymore.

Two years and a half I’ve spent feeling as if I was missing a crucial part of myself. Two years spent changing and twisting my personality like clay, experimenting with different alter egos. Maybe I should be the shy girl, or maybe the overexcited teacher’s pet. I changed myself because I wanted to be liked. I laughed a little louder to mask the blood sputtering from my lips, I smiled a bit more to hide the frown pricking at the corners of my mouth like metal toothpicks.

I contemplate life and death so much sometimes I think I’m Hamlet. Would it be easier to end it all, escape from the countless gossiping and death glares, spare the world from more salty tears? Or should I just continue trying? Trying even though I don’t know what I’m trying to achieve—should I just continue living when I’m already dead? Am I supposed to hold on for a future I was never guaranteed?

Nothing felt okay anymore, nothing felt right.

I think long and hard about this, every day. Even when my mind is filled with math equations and examples of personification—I think I’d rather die than live.

It’s strange how I’m still alive now, if I have come to the earlier conclusion.

Change is a thing we all have to come to accept in life. Seasons change and so do our situations. We changed the way we act and the way we dress. Change is fundamental in the dynamic chaos that is our lives, and like all things, some people deal with change better than others.

Before I came to Vietnam, I was suddenly ripped away from America, the only home I ever knew, to be plopped in a land with people who didn’t know my name and just liked to ask me how much I weighed. I only knew a few words, simple ones, but my ears could still stick onto the things others were saying. My parents did not help the transition from the States back to Vietnam—my mother would constantly yell at me about how dumb I was for not even knowing how to speak my own language, voice the disappointment that she faces each day when she sees me—and it made all my emotions go haywire.

In life you can always count on your family for support. I lay awake every now and then wondering what it would feel like to have parents that love and care for you. But then I’d feel guilty—there are tons of other kids without any parents at all, struggling much more than I am—my problems are minuscule and my over-dramatic brain magnifying the problem from a molehill into a mountain. Twisting and turning my blankets into spaghetti noodles sometimes calms my nerves enough for sleep, but I stay conscious most nights, pondering into the darkness.
I’ve changed. I’ve changed from that seven-year-old girl in the Justice jeans and sparkly pink tank tops. I can’t wear tank tops now—not just because it’s against school code—they make me feel disgusting and they highlight every lump of fat on my body. I’m not confident, I’m the last furthest thing from it, because honestly, I don’t know who I am anymore.

It’s so easy to get lost in the hurricane of change, blinded by bucketfuls of confused aspirations and ears blocked from thundering resentment. The worst part is that you lose yourself—your identity— getting stripped bare and skin raw. You can’t blame anyone but yourself.

A new school, a new identity.  A new day, a new shade of that persona. I used to think that if I moved to a new school, I could reinvent myself. I could finally be the type of person I wanted to be, the type of person that I’d try to copy from. We’ve all struggled with this at one point or the other, asking ourselves who we are, but it’s been brought to clarity that we’ve always been ourselves. It’s just a matter of time before the torn skin grows back, scarred with all the experiences we’ve been through.

Without her—who am I?

I am known for being obnoxious, too loud and a little too desperate for my own good. I have white glasses and a fat face, an emotional heart that breaks at every tug. I cry more water than I drink, even though I am afraid to now because of the extreme backlash that comes with it. I can write, commonly known as the only thing I can do—and I can’t even argue against it, because it’s probably the only thing I have a bit of talent in.

This school changed me.

An identity is made of all the things you’ve done to yourself and all the things that others have done to you. It is the snorts that itch themselves into your skin and the insults they threw at you that sometimes is flung hard enough so you’d bleed; it is the the passion that you sacrifice to your interests, your hopes, inspirations and dreams. An identity isn’t skin deep—it pierces through flesh and attaches itself to your heart, pounding with it like one—but at the same time it can change as much as your grades, twisting and bending to evolve into a fit and perfect personality for that situation. We change to fit better with some, and go out of our ways to annoy others.
I’m not happy anymore, at least in truth there is always a swirling pit of emptiness that eats at me everyday, it dims the happiness with overwhelming sadness. But at least I know this is me, not me from third grade or the me from my old school—the me now is me. I can find comfort in the fact that I know this for certain. Even with every twist and turn my personality takes the one thing that will never change is the fact that it’s mine.

“Unless we base our sense of identity upon the truth of who we are, it is impossible to attain true happiness.” — Brenda Shoshanna.