I’ve always clung to labels. I collect them like prized medallions and pin them across my chest. A redhead. A twenty-something girl. A Libra. A lover of Fleetwood Mac, specifically Stevie. A perfectionist and a procrastinator, somehow simultaneously.
I just love the notion that people perceive me in some sense. As something or other. I know that spelling out the concept on paper makes it sound redundant, but the core of my high school beliefs boiled down to one absolute truth: to be seen, is to be loved.
When I was a senior in high school, I received the superlative “Most Likely to Brighten Your Day.” I was eighteen, freshly committed to Pitt, and planning on pursuing a career path that made most adults ask if I had a backup option. I was begging for someone to give me another prompt to follow, and those six, tacky words provided the perfect mold to cement my senior-year persona. Six words fashioned into a barbed-wire fence that I could herd my mess of complexities into. I practiced a permanent, toothy smile that never ceased to feel forced.
Sure, the superlative was somewhat true. I’m a glass-half-full kind of girl, and I will most likely always have something to add to a conversation… But what about the other side of the coin? What about the part of me that dreamt of clawing my way out of my small-minded, suburban bubble? What about the part of me that was aggressively opinionated, unsatisfied, and most contrastingly, unhappy? It was left to rot under the guise of a sickly sweet pushover, a school mascot for everything I used to go against.
A couple of months that felt like years whirled together and spat me out in a graduation gown. I offered teary goodbyes to girls that I had spoken to twice and teachers that I was never very fond of. As far as emotional depth goes, I was barely skimming the surface, but at least I had made it into the pool.
Within that agonizing purgatory sandwiched between graduation and college, “How do you feel now that you’ve graduated?” was a commonly used icebreaker.
To which, without fail, I would always respond, “Bittersweet,” through gritted teeth… even though the bitter-to-sweet ratio was a solid 20:80. How ironic that I forced myself to be the brightest in the room until the socially appropriate response was to be sad. Those six words plagued me with an inner monologue that functioned like a PR team, keeping my record of polite conversation clean and consistent.
That is, up until college.
When I got to college, many things changed, and most things didn’t. In the span of four months, I had lost any semblance of familiarity, and in return, gained ten years’ worth of friends. When adults asked if I had a backup plan, I started saying no.
But I was still putty fresh out of the casing: shapeless and impressionable. Who am I if I’m not perceived as something tangible? Surely that decision doesn’t belong to me.
For the first time in years, I had no veil to conceal my mess. What began as something purely internal, soon trickled out and solidified as something physical. Laundry routinely blanketed my dorm floor. With each passing Wednesday, I was one half-off bottle of wine closer to emptying my savings account. My thumb had adapted to five-second intervals between each methodical flick, muscle memory on par with my doom scrolling.
How to be successful by twenty-five! You should be successful by twenty-five. Flick. Get your Summer body by March! Flick. Get ready with me! Gym. Study. Green juice. Gym. Coffee. Class. Gym. Flick.
With each methodical flick of the thumb, I was hooked on the perception of being methodical myself. I was hooked on hair matted into sleek ponytails. A glossy makeup routine disguised as natural beauty and minimalism. I was plagued by this Clean Girl Aesthetic, this virtual perception of girlhood rooted in consumerism that I couldn’t afford to consume. Finally, I could pour my mess into another mold.
That is, up until I couldn’t.
I tried relentlessly to slick back my hair in that polished fashion that appears so seamless online, only to find that it reminded me of middle school, dunking my curly hair under the shower nozzle so that I could try to comb the ringlets out of it. I had spent years chasing a cure to my dissatisfaction, only to realize that I was trapped in an endless loop of unattainability.
Now, if there’s one label I’ll cling to, it’s that I’m a writer. And ever since, I’ve been able to romanticize my mess. A half-off bottle of wine is now a small price to pay for three hours’ worth of stories, and a senior superlative is now nothing but six, tacky words.
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