I have changed since high school began.

If I met myself now, I wouldn't recognize me. I am not the same little girl who sat in that freshman seat, nor am I the woman that little girl thought I would grow up to be. It's not a night and day difference; it's two things unconnected, unrelated like a rose and a dandelion, a flower and a weed. I'm not even close to the woman I thought could ever grow from some little weed in a nowhere mountain town, not the person I assumed would bloom out of the dirt I was planted in. I grew up out of that dirt patch that I blossomed in. I pulled myself up by the roots and left that patch behind; I found a new way to live, a new way to begin and ease my mind. I found myself when I left behind all I had known. I was taught how to love the blossom I was and to let my petals show themselves instead of picking at the growth. That little girl wouldn't let herself grow, was afraid of what would happen if she let her petals show; she was afraid of what she would be and what others who saw her petals would see. That little girl worried others would pick her pretty petals off or pluck her from the ground. I know now that no one will come around to pull me up by the roots. I'm not a defenseless dandelion in the weeds anymore; I'm a rose of my own accord, and these thorns are my armor that I made on my own. I have finally become fully mine. I am not the same as the little girl who sought to be of another's design. That dandelion in the dirt grew up to be someone she couldn't even imagine she could ever be. I was in a field of flowers, just a little weed, but I grew into a rose who came to know she could be all she would ever need. I left that garden, and I never looked back; I regret that. There's still the soul of a dandelion here, and I remember the dirt I grew up in just to leave. I didn't leave the dandelion behind or out of my mind. In high school, I used to sit under the pine trees in that front yard, and I imagined a woman who was wild and did things no one thought of ever doing. That girl just wanted to escape to places uncharted and things unknown. Now, I am wild, going to places for me and to help little flowers like who I used to be. I'll walk through every garden and meadow to help the flowers to see they can be whoever they wish, beyond imagination and capacity. I couldn't see that when I was a dandelion in the dirt and weeds, and I couldn't see what I would become eventually. I can see it now and recognize the same in others trapped in dirt. I seek to help those little flowers see they deserve to grow, something I needed when I was a little flower, too.