preface Sometimes I want to be everything. I want to be everyone, but I am only comfortable being myself. It is easy to run. To run faster and faster from everything that had happened. To disappear into the wilderness leaving the past behind. But this is the way that cowards take. We see two paths. The paths to hold to the comfort. The sameness. The stretching road of the every day sameness. Then there is the road overgrown with weeds. I always want to take the path less traveled. There I stood. Behind me was the clock tower on campus. I stood facing the ocean. I could see the sun set in the glittering waters, casting a reddish glow across the sky. Behind me, the darkened hills with families nestled in front of their heaters. There, togetherness. In the ocean, emptiness, the unknown. Is that not what we strive for? To seek something that we are not. We try to be something that we are not. When I was standing there, I felt some sort of happiness overcome me. It was not the kind where I felt that life was just right. But rather for a few times in my life, I felt at that moment the satisfaction of the moment. Perhaps I had made many wrong choices, but there is no point in redoing these choices. They were made with the intentions to be made. But I was satisfied. Comforted by my satisfaction. This is where it would be the last scene of the movie. Me standing there with my hand in someone else’s hand. We would look out at the ocean and think how perfect it was just that moment. It’s one of those things that is with me every day. Like so many people, I want to be the movie star on TV. I want to be the girl next door. The boy next door. The neighbor next door. The straight A student. The popular girl. The famous professor. It is all because I want to be somebody. Perhaps, that is the fear that I inhabited all my life. That I wanted to be somebody. Perhaps that is why I was afraid of being someone that wasn’t myself. • the heather incident • • writing the essay • • the essay tutor • • first love • • personal statement • • the meaning of the word friend • • back to home •