Who I Am Not

As I sit at the dinner table on this warm Sunday evening, having just devoured a yummy tofu and veggie stir-fry, I ask "Who am I?"… or rather, "Who am I not?". Although a thick haze of naivety and adolescence conceals my identity, I know this much about myself: I am not a "kill 'em with kindness" kind of girl. I simply can't be the polite young lady who nods her head and says "Yes, Daddy." or "Yes, Mommy." or "Yes, Sister." while receiving a scolding she knows she does not deserve.

I'm sure this statement sounds as though it could have rolled swiftly off the tongue of any arrogant, self-righteous teen; however, I am constantly humbled by how often I am wrong about so many things. Just today, I was wrong about to whom the shirt I was wearing belonged, which day of the month is was, the meaning of the word "parenchyma", the consistency of "crispy thick rice noodles" from a Vietnamese Pho restaurant (deep-fried in a large block and then sliced, in leiu of flaccid and slurp-up-able).

But aside from the countless surface-level misconceptions I form on a daily basis, I firmly and indisputably believe in the truthfulness of a select few of my realizations.

Like wearing my sister's dark blue Grateful Dead t-shirt out to breakfast without texting her first should not have lead to World War III. And asking to use my mom's car to pick up the AP Biology textbook I left at Abbey's on Friday is not reason enough to question my responsibility. And sleeping until early afternoon on weekends and wanting to be alone sometimes (or most of the time) does not mean that I am clinically depressed.

What they don't know is that I flopped out of bed at 8:15am that morning before breakfast and threw on the first shirt I could find. And that Abbey and I were singing so loudly to Beyonce in her beat-up white truck that I forgot we were at school a couple hours prior, and had nonchalantly tossed my textbook in the back seat. And that catching up on the many lost hours of sleep during the week and spending ample time with only my own mind to converse with is the only way I avoid any form of internal insanity.

I remember, in an argument I had with him at around age 12, my dad uttering in his deepest and most virulent voice, "I am your father. If I asked you to crawl your ass outside and howl at the moon, you would do it because I said so." I also remember how much fear and cowardice his power-hungry tone inflicted upon me. Thinking that my only choice in such a situation would be to crawl my ass outside and howl at the damn moon. I kept my mouth shut and accepted my inferiority, while subliminally fueling my father's internal narcissistic fire.

It was only within the past year or so when I discovered the meaning of respect and how it should be rightfully distributed. Respect is not a God-given right to elders; it is to be earned by compassion, benevolence, and humility. So even when those who I am obligated to respect by social constructs cast judgements and make assumptions based on half-truths, I fight back. I point out logical fallacies within their reasoning. I tell them what they don't want to hear. I demand the same respect they seek. As you can imagine, this doesn't win me any popularity contests within my household. But I would rather let go of conditional love than lose sight of what little I know about who I am.

I still have a hell of a journey to finding myself and the reason I am worth the ample amount of breaths I have been blessed with thus far. But despite all of the confusion evoked by my teenage identity crisis, there is a truth I hold self-evident: I will never howl at the moon for anyone.