Picking Me Apart

         My name is Natalie, but since that name is boring and too long and doesn't fit my personality, think of me as Ava. I'm a sixteen year old girl from a part of Ohio that most people forget about because it's nestled in between the mountains of West Virginia and the much larger cities of Athens and Cincinnati. But Southeastern Ohio isn't so bad, we grow up on farms and right across from the great Ohio River. I grew up knowing how to appreciate the small things in life which is probably the reason I want to live in a van with very few belongings and travel. I learned to value experiences, faith, and people over material things.

       Anyways, there are some material things I quite enjoy just like anyone else. Jewelry, baggy jeans, my chucks from 8th grade, my PT Cruiser, Herbie, and just about anything used or vintage that I find at thrift stores. I'm the type of person who tries to categorize themselves by what they wear, what they like, and the way others perceive them. I couldn't tell you how many personality tests I've taken, how many different ways I've found to tell myself who I am. I'm an INFP (the peacemaker) according to the Myers Briggs's 16 types test, I'm a Hufflepuff according to too many Hogwarts Sorting Hat quizzes, my zodiac is a Cancer sun and Leo moon, I'm like an everything bagel or something, or that's what a Buzzfeed test said. I just wish it was easy to tell who you should be. I wish someone could pick my brain apart and tell my exactly why I am the way that I am.

        I think maybe the reason I'm so desperate for something to tell me who I am is because I'm so desperate to be different from everyone else I know. I have a very big family, I'm one of four, my mom is one of nine, my dad only has a sister, but I think it feeds into my identity crisis. It's not that I want to be different from my parents or cousins or sisters or aunts and uncles or grandparents, but everything I'm good at someone else is good at too. How can you be special when you all have the same talents and abilities? I have picked up every single art medium that I have access to, but someone else in my family has done it before and better than I can. So I write. Even though my mother did before me. I do it more than she could ever imagine. It's my release, poetry and paragraphs, word after word after word. This is mine and no one else can take it from me. But I'm not good at sharing it with those that know me, so this is my record of thoughts, shared with strangers on the internet. If anyone finds it that is.

-Ava