Who Is Summer

I think that what you think about me is just as much the truth as anything I can articulate about myself....

We may know ourselves better than anyone else does, but we're also the most biased. The most unable to back away and look at ourselves objectively. I think I'm passionate and funny and loud and self-centered and not that talented. I think I'm fun to be around but I don't have that much staying power. I think people think about me a lot when I'm in a room with them, and not much once I'm gone. I think I'm like rock and roll, I think I'm like glittery clothes. I wish sometimes I was more like classical music, more like jeans and velvet. What do you think of me? It's just as valuable to me as what I think.

I guess I do hear things about myself that I think are untrue. People say I'm brave. I think I seem brave because I'm just scared of different things than you. I can talk about my tiny titties all day that doesn't even make me flinch... But brave would be if I talked about something that IS hard for me to say up there. Brave would be if I went to that talent show and talked about my self esteem, my emotional rollercoasters, my lies.

But who is to really say that my definition of brave is better than yours? And besides, while we're touching on all this personal identification stuff... doesn't it constantly change? Sure, some things on my we're all so rad page seem unreal to me. But so do some of the things I wrote on this page a few months ago. I don't think those of you who haven't seen me in a year or two or three know me now. I certianly didn't that many years ago. Everyone changes constantly and I'm only at camp for two weeks of every year, if that. You couldn't keep up with me. These days I'm writing songs. I'm developing talent. I'm developing content. Maybe I'm losing my flash. Maybe I'm less brillant. Maybe I don't glow in the dark. But my hair is growing out and I don't know you either, or I do or any number of other variables.

I just think that worrying so much about what boxes people have put you in is kind of wasteful. Mostly because it's unavoidable. Everyone I meet puts me into a cookie cutter they have in their mind. I put myself in them. My past is strewn with them. So is everyone else's. The best I can do is keep shedding them, keep changing, keep ignoring them as best as possible and changing myself for what I think is the better. Or what everyone else does.

I refuse to make these value judgements anymore. It makes me sound pretentious, I'm sure. But I'm just tired of talking about the "real me". Every me is the real me. Your me is the real me just as much as the one typing is.

The end. -Summer