Who I Am

I am always inclined to leave hard-to-answer blogs until the very last minute, these philosophical questions that really have no answer. Who am I? The thing is, I have two answers. I could give you the technical answer: I am a female, more specifically a teenage girl. I am Asian, and I absolutely love to eat. I'm exactly five feet tall, exactly the height at which none of my jeans ever fit me right.
But I have another answer, for I am not a demographic, not a number, not a word. I'm a person, a being, me. When I think of myself, I don't think: Stephanie Chang, AP Lit Student, Korean, 17 years old. Or college applicant: GPA not perfect, but love of learning pretty evident. I think of...well, me.
I'm an optimist.
I find my greatest successes in failure. I may never be able to play guitar while singing; I may never be able to understand Calculus.
I'm a cliche.
I'm that Korean girl who listens to Kpop by day and Shostakovitch and Dvorak by night.
I'm a nerd.
I've read Harry Potter and All the King's Men--and loved them both.
I'm a dreamer.
The girl with high hopes and dreams I will probably never reach: cure cancer. Eradicate AIDS. Invent a car that runs on fat. Train a pack mule to follow me around, carrying my things.
I'm an oxymoron.
I can confidently belt out a song in choir without a problem but begin hyperventilating when I think about college admissions.
I am everything, and yet I am nothing. I was put here on earth by my Lord, my God, to love, to learn, to change the world in some way. I am His special child, a blessing. And yet there are so many other children like me; I am not special. There's no saying that what I do in my lifetime, what I do in this world will make a difference in the end. Perhaps I will live and die away, fading into nothingness, having changed nothing for better or worse.

In the end, I am like Grendel.
I knew there was a reason I didn't like Beowulf (the man, not the poem). It's because I'm the monster.
I hope that I don't physically resemble Grendel, the hairy man-eater who shakes his fists at the sky. But I resemble him in mind. We are both confused, both searching for the truth, the meaning of our lives. I guess I would be half relativist, half determinist. Sure, I have my own morals, my own personal truths and beliefs, but I am under the impression that not everyone has to believe what I believe, not everyone must believe in my God. If someone has a rationale for what he is doing, a meaning behind the way he lives life, I am prone to question but not condemn. I believe that everything has a purpose; whether or not someone or something fulfills that purpose is a totally different story.

I don't know who I am, what my purpose is, why I do what I do. All I am sure of is that I am here right now, I exist, to live. To enjoy life. And figure myself out.