A Glance At My Reflection

The hardest thing in the world for me to write about is myself. I have no problems when writing about my life or the many influential people in it, but writing a piece of self-reflection has always been difficult for me. Yesterday in my advisory period at school, we were asked to write five to eight sentences about what we believed our "greatest strength" was. I sat there in my seat for about five of the fifteen allotted minutes, just trying to think of something to jot down on the paper in front of me. It wasn't going to be graded, but someone else would read it, and that worried me slightly. Writing about one of my flaws would have been easy, but I've always found that when a person asks me to compliment myself in my writing, I worry that I will come across as arrogant or superior, which in a way, I suppose, is slightly unfair. After all, the teacher asked us all to compliment ourselves in the first place. So I sighed, picked up my pencil, and wrote.

But no one is asking me to compliment myself now. A thought simply came to me when I clicked "new post", that I might write a little about myself and how I see myself as a person. But truly, I don't know exactly what type of person I am. If I were to stand up right now and walk over to the closest mirror, what would I see? I suppose I'll stand up and find out.

My natural, stuck between light brown and dirty blonde, hair is slightly disheveled from being seated on the chair in my mudroom, and my eyeliner has run, just slightly, on the corner of my right eye, but other than that I look pretty put together for a teenage girl in her jammies on a Friday night. My greenish eyes are bright as I smirk at my reflection, caught between thinking the approach I'm taking for this post is silly, and enjoying myself as I write my observations on my appearance in the downstairs bathroom of my home. I am, from an appearance point of view, your average teenage girl. I've got a couple cosmetic, skin problems, many thanks to adolescence and the chilled winter air, and more than my fair share of split ends, but I am proud of the girl I see in the mirror as well, because I know what lays beneath the laughing smile that lights her face.

I am a girl who comes home in the afternoon and writes songs on the piano instead of watching tv or logging onto facebook. I treasure my time alone, but love both the liveliness and happiness that come from time spent with my friends and family. I laugh long and loud, and I try my best to smile through the good times and the bad. I fall down sometimes. I make mistakes, and I'm no stranger to tears. Insecurity knocks on my door when I get a low grade at school or my male friends make one too many jokes, but I have an unfailing belief in myself that has never failed to pull me back onto my feet again. I know how to stand up for myself and for my friends when they find themselves in that same, shadowed pathway we've all mistakenly walked down in the past.

I don't allow anyone to decide who I am, but I keep my mind open, so as not to turn down helpful advice. I'm not so overconfident in myself and my identity that I don't realize that time is going to change me. I accept that and welcome that change. But at this point in my life, I am very comfortable just being me, and I personally think that's a pretty good thing to be.