For a long time, a particularly long time, I was convinced that I was too much—too loud, too weird, too questioning. Those things that I was interested in turned around and bit me and made me question myself. That dress that I really liked sometimes made me question if it really brought out my eyes after all. And all this questioning lead to a bad outcome: around some people, I stopped talking about those things I liked, and around some people, I wouldn't even speak at all. I stopped wearing that dress that may or may not have brought out my eyes, because I didn't like the way I looked in it because I thought it didn't flatter me. I would refrain from eating the icing off a cupcake because I thought it would get stuck on my nose, in my teeth, on my hips.

But icing doesn't care about those kinds of things. Icing is loud, vibrant, full of life. Icing has a spontaneous personality, I'm sure of it. It has a versatile fashion sense—sprinkles and bright colored dots. The icing on a cake, cupcake, or any other kind of dessert knows what it is and flaunts it. And I wish I could be like that.

I wish I could say that I am weird, and my laugh is a little bit loud. I try a bit too much to try and be pretty - I polish my nails and comb my hair when it gets frizzy and wear dresses fairly frequently, and I'm also under the impression that none of these things have helped with my looks. I have the certain impression that nothing will help with my looks, that I'm destined to always look a little bit awkward when next to someone, that I'm going to continually trip upstairs and fall when trying to hop out of a pair of blue jeans.

And I've come to realize within this past year, that it's okay if I am those things. I'm icing on a cake. I don't know what type of cake, and I don't know what type of icing. You’ll just have to try me. But I am that kind of special. I'm spontaneous, I'm adventurous, I'm versatile. I don't trip upstairs, I do have frizzy hair, I am a little bit (a lot) pale. I snort at things I think are funny, I sometimes say two words at once and get tongue-tied, I also have a bad habit of eating too much pasta, rice, or bread.

And I think I'm the icing on the cake. I'm all that and a bag of chips. I'm a firecracker. I'm sometimes a little bit too much; I'm too loud, too weird, too questioning.

I've come to realize that there are some people who just don't have a taste for sprinkled green icing, and those same people like multicolored icing. I've come to realize that's it's the people that I've come across. Those past lovers that I had, past best friends, past acquaintances, all found a problem with sprinkled green icing. It was too sweet, too flamboyant, too proud. The taste stuck to their teeth, colored them green, they had to wash the taste out with water. And so it's not me that drove those people away - it was their preferences. Those lovers wanted me to behave a certain way, talk with my eyes downcast and smile shyly. They didn't want me to argue and broadcast my opinion, prove them wrong with pure fact. Those friends wanted their way, wanted me to shrug nonchalantly and laugh it off. And those preferences were damaging to them, not to me, because they never understand that there were different kinds of people, just like there are different kinds of icing.

And I've come to realize that I shouldn't disguise myself as something different. I should be too loud, too weird, too questioning. I should be all that I am - versatile, spontaneous, a home-body, adventurous, cautious; a walking contradiction. I know now that those people who have stuck by my side through it all, through experimenting phases where I tried to be what I thought I had to be, are those people that do like sprinkled green icing, they are those people who do have a taste for me. I have a taste for them, too, and I've come to understand that life is better with icing—and lots of it.