Personal Narrative: Me For Me

As soon as I read this question, I immediately knew the answer. It came to me like a refreshing gust of wind, on a sunny day. The answer is beautifully tragic, that answer is being yourself.

All About Me Before I was born, my parents used to call me goblin. This was because I ended up being born around an hour after Halloween night, and at the time i was expected to be born right on Halloween. Since then it has been 14 years and I am now a freshman at Turpin high school. I have an awesome family that consists of four people. It’s me, my younger brother Michael, and my parents. Michael is an eighth grader at Nagel, and just recently turned 13. My parents work together in their own company where they recruit people for jobs. Also, the two families (the Kotts & Meeks) that live on either side of my house are pretty much like my second family. I am closest with Elizabeth, who is 17, and Sara who is 16. I love to go on different

When it comes to what separates me from other teenagers, there would be quite a bit to tell. I would say a major difference which separates me from my peers is my love for barbershop harmony music. I do not have a quartet of my own; however, I love to sing barbershop tags with other friends at church. I set myself apart from the world because of my beliefs: as a New Testament christian, I believe the bible gives us all instruction concerning spiritual matters.

What defines me is my drive to help people, and the adrenaline and mental high I get from doing it. I can accredit this to my Aunt Rhonda who was a Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) During my early childhood. I remember her letting me sit on her lap after she got back from a long weekend of volunteering, and me marveling over her stories of the shift. By the time I got to elementary school, I had started carrying extra band-aids in my backpack so as to save the life of a possible wounded classmate. When I got into middle school, I was familiar with the first responder standards of care and had my own basic medical bag. I spent my weekends reading “Grey's Anatomy” and watching endotracheal intubation demonstrations on youtube instead of doing my homework. But everything I

Why I Became Me I saw, even though you tried to cover my eyes. I heard, even though you tried to block my ears. I felt, even though you pretended there wasn't a reason to. How could I possibly understand what I was seeing and feeling at such a young age? Who was there for me to talk to about it? No one..I had to comprehend so much. I sat behind the door with my back against it, when the screaming began again I closed my eyes this time. I pictured myself in a meadow with the grass being pure green and the sky being pure blue. The sun shined so brightly on my skin and the feeling of warmth comforted me. I could see a man walking up to me, but he was so bright you couldn't see his face. My throat was in a knot and my heart was heavy, but as

“Someone forgot to take a shower.” Two pairs of eyes immediately looked over at me. My first day of sixth grade was full of many microaggressions and passive aggressive chuckles. “No, but actually, who smells like that?” Attending a predominantly white school in the suburbs of Minnesota attenuates you to that kind of stuff. “Is it true Ethiopians eat food with their hands like monkeys?” Little did I know that these microscopic insignificant interactions had a greater impact on my awareness of my own identity than anyone else. I stood five feet tall, with my dark brown skin, and wore my hair into two puff balls, one on each side. I already stood out. The strong smell that surrounded my entire body is what made me stand out even more. Middle

When I pondered all of the character traits that I retain, a prominent attribute that recurred to me was that of independence. I have been called independent by sundry people and I like to think of myself as so. I express my independence in many different ways, for example, the

Identity. Who we are. How we define ourselves. Imagine taking away something that defines you. You’re left feeling “who am I?”

The majority of people find it natural to separate what they believe from who they are as an individual. They are able to draw conclusions from what they believe to be true about the world and have separate experiences that they allow to define them. However, I am very intentional about not allowing experiences to define what I believe to be true or allow it to carry much weight in defining me as an individual. In a perfect world, I would rather allow my experiences to be an expression of what I believe.

One of the things that I struggle with in life is Identity. I have been questing God about seminary school, family, friends, work, marriage, kids and even the color of my skin. I come from a place where if you are a black man wearing a pair of jeans with a white tee shirt you are considered a thug, or if you have twist, dreadlock you are a thug. I come from a place where your father is not in your life and over 70% of he black man are raised in a fatherless home. Where most of uses are raised in the street because, them are the only man in our life that will pay use some attention. But in my case I was blessed to go home to a dad ever night even though I can’t tell you anything about my father for the simple fact that he never gave me a hung, kiss, tell me he loves me, spend any time with me, say anything positive, always talking to me and my mom like we are noting, even beat my mom and when you try to tell family about it they just look at me like am crazy.

Since being adopted, I have continued to try to find more about who I am and what I am supposed to do. Although I have been asked many times when I found out and how it makes me feel, it is still a taboo topic to talk about because of the little information I know. I was admitted to the orphanage after being found at the bottom of a staircase in the middle of a village square. After ten months of being admitted, I was adopted, but I almost did not make it because of a high fever and infection. As a baby, I did not want to hold any medicine that was given to me and because of this, a close family friend had to fly in some Western medicine so that I could have a chance at life. Since then it has been a challenge to find my place in this world

My identities are complicated and hard to explain so the best way I can do at this point is do kind of a free form of the two and then explain them the best way I possibly can. My first identity would be the blue collar professional one (Mr. Coverdale). he is well-spoken, poised, well-mannered, and knowledgeable. The second identity (Henry). He would be the short tempered, disrespectful, and just do not care about anyone or anything but himself and takes no bull from anyone. They get along more than they disagree with each other helping each other out in a way that things get done in the right way, but they do bump head from time to time. The situation in which that happens has to be the most challenging and conflicting. sometimes one is entirely

I was born and raised in Iran, and left to US when I was 26 not knowing a soul here. Back in Iran, the social and conventional context of country wouldn’t expect and accept unpredicted traits from young females such as living alone or solo traveling. Therefore, I used to

One... Two... Three... Four... Five... I take a deep breath. It's the only thing I can do to keep myself from screaming. I'm looking at one of my co-drum majors, and he's staring at me with his eyebrows raised. A freshman waits to the side of us, hands on her hips as she waits for us to get our lives together. When I told her she needed to safety pin her shirt together to adhere to the dress code, he had loudly professed that I was just being overdramatic and she didn't really need to listen to me. I pulled him aside, and our argument continued in a similar fashion. Fast forward five minutes, and I eventually told her she could go but needed to wear a more appropriate to the next night's band practice. He had won, but he didn't understand

Me Look at me: When i first moved it was to California by a beach.Started unpacking all of a sudden a stranger is at a door saying welcome,i said thank you,then it went from another person over and over and over again so much that are refrigerator was full for 3 weeks.Next day it was the first day of school