The past few days I’ve spent figuratively undressing myself to who I really am to my deepest core. I wanted to carefully inspect who I was, so I danced on the idea of stripping myself off of everything that made me who I am — everything that accompanied the roles that I played in this life — daughter, sister, friend, best friend, lover, teacher, peer, colleague. I pranced on the idea of skinning myself down to who I am without all this privilege, all these materials, all the opportunities I had, all the support I’m getting; without the financial hold my parents have over me, without the pressure of being the eldest sister in an Asian household, without the labels of who I should act to be. I wanted to know if there was anyone left if I detached myself from the roles I had to play in my day to day life. And that if there was anyone, I’d like to get to know her, and watch her play out her truth. I wanted to let myself exist as I am, literally and figuratively.
To do that, I had to inspect who I was, who I was not anymore, and who I am now.
I remembered.
I remembered what it was like to be the kid with the wildest imaginations, the kid who loved to read, the kid who loved words, who loved school, who loved books and stories more than anything else in the world. I remembered what it was like to be the kid who excelled at everything, and I remembered who I was before that. I remember being young and looking at the “it girls” from school and thinking to myself, “I wonder what it would be like to live a day in their lives?”, and I remember asking that out of curiosity, and not out of envy. In school, I looked at the populars and for a brief moment there was wonder at how everyone knew who they were, how everyone wanted to know what they were always up to. It seemed to me like they were a walking television show, that everybody was on their heels, and that if one of them ever did anything remotely scandalous, they would be the talk of the town. I thought it was an unfair way to live, to keep up with the expectations of others. I was then resolved to not wanting any attention for myself, and preferred a life of a follower, where I just hid or fit in like the others. Little did I know that I was going to become quite the opposite of that. The one reason I rose to ~popularity~ in school was because I excelled in my studies, kind of like a surprise. I sneaked my way into the Top 10, into the Top 5, and eventually sat myself in the 1st place. As a child, I just wanted to make my parents proud. As a student, I just wanted to make my teachers proud. But as me? I just liked to learn. I liked answering things. I liked that I understood the lessons right away. I liked that I found patterns in math quicker than most did. I liked to read, I liked to study. I liked writing notes. Most especially, I liked being right. As if being “correct” was a way to say “I am correct”, some sort of validation to my own existence. Like me existing was in itself correct.
I remembered all the weird things I did to “build” myself.
At such a young age, I was so focused on my personal identity that I carefully kept track of who I was and what made me, me. I was quick to notice when I started liking something, or disliking something. I was acutely aware of the experiences that I was having, and then recording them tangibly as something that I liked, something that I wanted to do again, and something that definitely wasn’t me. I remembered the words that I carefully spoke, playing with them to create a language that was my own. I worked to be cool on my own terms -- which, at the time, was me speaking English with a vocabulary that I built to have words occur frequently in my conversations. I remember writing in bullets, “say fool, I! instead of stupid me” or “use certain, instead of sure” and “ALWAYS USE PROPER PUNCTUATION”. I did not want to be influenced by people and the shortcuts they had in texting. I was often told, “do you always text so proper? you sound mad.” No. I sounded like me. So many of the things I did was all because I wanted to own me. I wanted me to come from me. So much, that people started using phrases like, “that’s so Lourdes” or “what a very Lourdes thing to do” or “do it the Lourdes way”. By 15, I prided myself in my own personal identity that I always asked strangers “how much do you know about yourself?”, because I was confident I had the answer to that question that many people didn’t have yet.
What I did not know was that each year that came, I changed. And I carefully took note of that, too. I crossed out the things that I wasn’t anymore. Habits that I’ve newly cultivated. Habits that I’ve outgrown. Food that I decided not to eat anymore. Every time there was a change in who I am, I took note of.  There were a lot of strikethroughs on the page, things that looked like this is who I am instead of this is who I am. I’ve kept it up for 8 years. And I looked back each year, at these people that I used to be.
I remembered my roots.
I remembered the things that felt like me. I remembered what it meant to be me. I remembered the things that I placed importance on. I listened to all of the old playlists I saved. I listened to music for hours. I inspected their lyrics. I read. I painted. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I gave in to the seduction that nostalgia offered, so that I could understand how I went from being A to B. I inspected past relationships. What went wrong. What it meant to be Lourdes in a friend group before, and what it means to be Lourdes in a friend group now. I felt what it was like to be Lourdes in love; what it meant to be Lourdes in a relationship before, and what it means to be Lourdes in a relationship now. I remembered what it meant to be Lourdes before, and what it means to be Lourdes now.
And I remembered that I forgot.
I forgot that I was meant to keep reinventing myself. I forgot that it was normal to not feel “like myself” on days, because I’m not supposed to feel “like myself” always, because every day changes me. Every day that passes by brings a new information, a new feeling, a new emotion, a new revelation, a new thought, a new idea, a new inch of growth. And that for as long as I am living, I know I am growing. And growing essentially means “not being me anymore”. Growing means being scared. Growing means dancing on the edge of uncertainty. Growing means living with less fear each day. Growing means looking at your comfort zone and taking a step outside of it. Growing means waddling in the waters with your feet not having solid ground to touch on. Growing means “I’m not here to be made comfortable”. Growing means knowing that change is always around the corner. Growing means looking at yourself in the mirror and not recognizing yourself. Growing means accepting what you see instead of not liking what you see.
There will always be parts of me that I have the hardest time loving. There will always be parts of me that I am not anymore. There will always be parts of me that I don’t recognize because they’ve just recently grown into me. All of these days I was so focused on uprooting old, dried leaves stunting my growth that I completely overlooked the new sprouts of leaves that I have to notice, to pay attention to, and to accept having.
All these parts of me, I will continue to carry. To honor them. To honor the people who I became in order to be the person that I have become. Because without these parts of me, I wouldn’t be who I so uniquely am today.
