If you look at me, what do you see? Who do you see? What can you tell about my identity just from looking at me? Anything? Nothing? Remember that.

The first part of my identity that ever really mattered—not just to me, but for me—was my size. I was a rather large baby, and this trend continued. I was always toward the top of the charts when we went to the doctor. My dad tells me a story about us at the grocery store when I was little. Despite being 3 or 4-years-old, I looked like I was at least 5 or 6. Only a couple of years off, but even a few months makes a major difference when you’re that young. People at the grocery store often labeled me as slow because I looked so much older than I was. Despite the fact that I can’t remember this, and I’m not sure it really mattered to me at the time, it was the first part of my identity that really meant anything, that made people treat me differently.

When I was about 7 or 8-years-old, the most important part of my identity was the fact that I was a girl. A couple of years earlier, I wouldn’t have cared—most of my closest friends were boys, and I had a birthday party at a nature preserve and held bugs and snakes. But now, nothing could anger me more than someone getting that wrong. When I was 5, I had princess hair—long, flowing locks that were most of the way down my back. Towards the end of second grade, I had a lot of my hair chopped off—mainly due to my mother’s frustration with getting the tangles out of my hair. My voice was starting to change a little, and with my size, I could be mistaken for a young boy. I remember one morning at Golden Corral: I was sitting at the table by myself—my parents and sister were getting food, but I had already gotten mine—and the waitress returned to ask if we needed anything. I said we would probably need one coffee, because my dad would always order a cup. When the waitress returned with the coffee, she told my dad, “Your son says you wanted some coffee.” I think this is the first time I was ever so offended that it stuck with me.

Over the years, my appearance became more important to me. Cliques were starting to establish, and my peers (and I) were starting to be cruel based on superficial reasons. When I was 9, I discovered the word "liposuction." That first part of my identity that really made a difference—my size—was once again an issue. I was “fat” compared to many of the other children; I knew it, they knew it, the teachers knew it—even my parents knew it. I drew a “before” and “after” picture of myself; the before picture was a stick figure with a circle for a stomach, and the after picture was a normal stick figure. The before picture was crying, and the after picture was smiling at how skinny and pretty she was. I wrote that my goal was to lose at least 40 pounds (which was just under half of my weight, in hindsight)—and I wasn’t sure even that was enough. It was my starting goal. When I showed my dad the picture, he just laughed; he told me that if I wanted to lose weight, I should eat better and exercise more. No words of reassurance were spoken; we all knew that I was fat and that nobody likes fat kids.

Although weight and physical appearance continued to be a very important part of my identity, the most important part of my identity soon morphed into sexual orientation—though we didn’t really know then that that was what it was. My first “boyfriend”—I use the term loosely—was in the fifth grade; my first crush was the year before. Though physical appearance, size and gender were still important—my mom told me that I would crush my crush (implying that I was so heavy that, if I were to sit on his lap, it would cause catastrophic damage and crush him)—my “boyfriend” and I “broke up” and one of the reasons was because I was so much taller than him. Also: Back then, all we knew was that the word “gay” used to mean happy, but now it meant you liked someone who was the same gender as you, and it was one of the most insulting things you could say to someone. In late elementary school and early middle school, having a boyfriend or girlfriend was like a status symbol: Look at me, I am desirable and heterosexual, the epitome of 11-year-old perfection. The number of boyfriends you’d had and the length of time you’d been “dating” were a large part of what determined how people perceived you.

In middle school, the facet of identity that became most important was how smart you were—at least for the kids in the gifted program. In elementary school, if you were in the gifted program, it didn’t really disrupt your social circle. The longest you’d be separated from the “normal” kids was for the majority of one day a week. In middle school, it’s a whole other program—my school called it PROBE. You were totally separate from the “normal” kids, with the exception of one class per day. Even within the PROBE team, there were other classes for the smartest of the smart—classes that would eventually determine whether or not you went to high school with a high school credit and could therefore be on another level for four more years. The main reason that grades became so important was because we were the PROBE kids. We were expected to excel at every aspect of our studies, and if we didn’t, it was because we clearly weren’t trying hard enough—no other explanation needed.

The issue of physical appearance once again reared its ugly head in middle school. One particular incident that separates itself from the others happened in seventh grade, just before the holiday break. A girl put her feet on my chair and started prodding my hip with her foot, snickering with another girl about how fat I was. I got upset and left the classroom, and the news of the incident circulated through our PROBE team—by the end of the day, I was more or less a laughingstock.

High school was hell. As you may have noticed, none of the facets of my identity that were important ever really went away. They just built up and up, like a tower of Legos built by a child who doesn’t understand that, in order to support the structure, you have to build for width as much as you do for height. If you don’t, the tower becomes unstable, breaks, and tumbles down to the ground. The things that had always been an issue still mattered, of course. Appearance, how smart you were, how feminine you were (or macho, if you were a boy). On top of that, little things that didn’t really seem to matter so much before became a lot more important. One of these was sexuality. High school is when having sex goes from taboo, deviant behavior to something that everyone should be doing. Of course, for girls, it’s a double-edged sword. If you do have sex, you’re a slut. If you don’t, you’re a prude. There’s no way to win. I was a prude, because I didn’t have sex. All I had were boyfriends that cheated on me, and I began to define myself by that. For the longest time, I thought that my boyfriends’ actions were fueled by something that I had done. Of course, I can see now that it wasn’t my fault—I was a doormat in high school. I put up with too much crap; I made excuses for other people’s toxic behaviors and made myself the easy scapegoat. Mental illness was another thing I struggled with in high school and continue to struggle with. The stigma concerning mental illnesses, especially in high school, only serves to make the person suffering from them feel worse. Nobody wants to talk about mental health. It wasn’t like I was asking people to solve my problems; I just wanted people to talk about things with. But people always seemed to assume that I wanted attention, that I needed their help—or they just didn’t want to talk about it plain and simple; it often got swept under the mat. I went through a lot of high school feeling alone, largely because of this stigma. Alone is an awfully sad thing to feel.

People put weight on identity in a different way in college. It isn’t as important, but at the same time, it is—just in a different way. I think the main contributing factor is the fact that most college students are a lot less judgmental than high schoolers. However, little things are still important. My religion is a larger part of my identity now because more people question it. My political stance has become more important to me because more people expect me to have thought-out opinions on current issues. My sexual orientation is a larger part of my identity because people are more open about these things now, and I am no longer closeted. As a young woman, it’s hard for gender not to be an important factor—for example, I am scared to walk across campus at night alone, and those fears are justified because there is a chance that I could be attacked; as a woman, I am seen as easy prey. A lot of what is important to me is based on outside factors.

But just because society determines a lot of what is important in my life based off of my various demographics, it doesn’t mean that I can’t choose what is personally important to me. I am proud of the fact that I am a dual-citizen of Canada and America (even though I used to cry about it as a child because it meant I couldn’t be president). I am thankful for my red hair and freckles—as dumb as it sounds, they are as much a part of my identity as anything else, and there are very few of us left—shout-out to Emily and Brooke. A large part of my identity comes from being a member of a sorority, which I recognize as one of the main things that has helped me to grow since coming to college. These are just a few of the aspects of my identity that I feel are important to me based on predominately internal factors.

Now think back to the questions I asked at the beginning: In a nutshell, who am I? How has your perception changed after hearing what my identity means to me? It’s probably changed at least a little, even if you know me fairly well. I think it is important to be mindful of this in our daily lives; the only person who can fully decide what their identity means to them is that person.

When I sat down to write this, I thought that what I would be writing was how my identity had changed throughout the years. While it has changed, it was not in the way I was expecting. The pieces of my identity that mattered to me fifteen years ago still matter, but they have been combined with other pieces of my identity that were perceived as important throughout my life—both due to external and internal factors. I’m sure that my identity will continue to change. I will strive to be mindful of the changes.