I stare at a blank page sometimes, knowing that I've got a feeling inside of me that needs to be written down. I know most of the time it's nonsensical, and no one actually reads through all these rants. Should I call them rants? Most of the time it's poetry. Most of the time it's stuff that no one understands without context. 

But I guess it's the fact that no one really reads this is what gives me the most comfort in posting. Because these are words straight from my heart, and I guess it's better that I don't have an audience.

I can't help but wonder, deep down inside, would I rather have an audience or only a few listeners? Or none at all? I suppose it's not my choice to make. 

There's a blurry line between being an introvert and an extrovert. At different stages in my life, I've identified myself with both of them, strongly. It's odd, though, how I can actually bounce back and forth. I never really have one to strictly call myself. I guess I'm what they call an ambivert. But that's a label, and I'm getting really sick and tired of labels.

Throughout my life, I've looked for different ways to understand myself through labels. It's how I created characters in books: who they were, what they were like, what personality type they were, what role they played in society. And oftentimes I guess I see myself and the others around me in my own storybook, as their own characters in a world that someone far away is writing.

And I use those labels to help myself understand why certain people do certain things, why they act in some ways, why the world works the way it does. But it's never quite made sense to me, and for good reason. 

People are more complex than the labels they hold or think they hold or try to hold. People are human and every human has a thousand facets. 

When I began talking to my last boyfriend, we began our introductions by giving each other every last detail about ourselves. Favorite color, all our hobbies, favorite TV shows, number of pets, etc. The whole first month we talked felt like a drawn-out game of 20 questions, and eventually, it got to the point where we were asking each other our favorite numbers. 

And I find it strange, how even though we knew every little statistic and detail about each other, I still felt like I barely even knew him. It took months of dating to even recognize the person standing in front of me, even though I cared for him and enjoyed my time with him.

Now I sit, two entire years later, texting some other boy that I met once at a basketball game 6 months ago. He doesn't even know my name. He's kind of an f-boy and I don't intend to do anything with this. But I'm texting him for the hell of it - probably because I'm bored or lonely or something. 

He knows absolutely nothing about me. Who I am, my reputation, my beliefs, interests, morals, anything. I'm a blank slate.

And what do we talk about?

80s pop singers. Whether or not chemistry should be banned from the high school curriculum. The coronavirus quarantine. Stupid stuff that's so out of context that you would need no background information on a person to have a conversation about.

Suddenly I've learned that I'm quite fluent in sarcasm, now that the conversations aren't scripted interviews. 

Suddenly I've learned that I'm a different person when I'm not walking on eggshells. 

A different person that I've never met, and challenges all the labels I'd previously established myself to be.  

I can't really assign myself labels at all anymore, can I? Because I look into the mirror and I see a girl who is every shade of everything, and once I call myself something, I find that the description no longer fits. I can't give myself any definite personality traits because they're always dynamic. I'm always growing into a new person, like shedding an old skin. 

So I'm sitting there, trying to fill out an Instagram bio and all I can think to put is "rawr".

I try to find song quotes that fit my mood. That fit my life. And as soon as I feel like it fits, it doesn't. So I listen to more music, hoping to find it. 

I write words, poems, stories, that I think might sum up everything. But as soon as I finish and all the words fall out, suddenly there's more, and that last thing I wrote just wasn't enough.

I speak to people. I tell my stories. I laugh. I flirt. I cry. I put on a show, entertain, paint a world for others so maybe they can understand my own. Sometimes I feel like an extrovert. Sometimes I feel like the thunderstorm is where I belong.

But then I get stuck at home for 3 months, and I'm told this is an extrovert's worst nightmare. So then why do I feel so welcome to it? I've relished in my alone time, and it's good to get back to Netflix and knitting and writing and art. But at the same time, I miss the action as well. 

So where do I belong, the storm or the shelter?

Sometimes I feel like maybe I've just always been the same person. Maybe I'm just one person with many facets that I just haven't discovered or understood just yet. That seems like a plausible explanation to me.

But explain to me why I can visualize each of my past selves as a completely different character?

Explain to me why I read my old journals or posts or writing and hear a different voice?

Explain to me why every person I've met has a different description of me?

Explain to me why I get a friend request from my ex and then hit "ignore" even though two months ago that's all I really wanted?

I don't understand why I do some things. I try and I try and I try to understand myself, but at this point, it gives me a headache to even try. 

I used to be able to keep track of all the changes in my life. I could probably count them off with my fingers at one point. But now, I'm living in a whole different world than I was a year ago. A few days ago, I rode back down to my old road to visit my cousins, and it was like opening a time capsule.

A year ago, we were moving. It was summer. The last time I spent time there, it was summer.

And suddenly it's summer again, and it's like I'm back again, a whole year ago, and the whole insanity that was my junior year never happened.

I never moved. I never had the anxiety attacks. I was never hurt. There was no breakup. No quarantine. There was no anything.

I passed my old house, and it felt like I could just walk back in, and see everything just the way it was before we left it. My dog would be waiting on the back porch, which would be scribbled with pastel chalk dust. There'd be my brother's blankets waving on the clotheslines, and the yard would be littered with mulberries. 

Colt might even be waiting for me inside. My mom would be folding clothes in the living room, watching whatever she could find on Netflix. The air conditioner would be blowing, and the ceramic tile floors would be cold beneath my feet, and I could just grab an Italian Ice popsicle out the freezer in the garage. 

If I let myself forget everything for just a moment, it's like I was back.

But instead of making me feel better like I thought it would, it just made me sick.

Sure, I had missed my cousins. But I don't think I want to go back. At all. 

Now I'm in a different world. I've left it all behind, and the memories that used to console me, the ones I hung on to for dear life because I was too scared to let go.

So the question remains: have I changed, or just discovered different parts of myself? Am I still the same person I was before everything happened, or am I just a shell? 

I like to think, though, that it's something that my youth minister told me the other day.

Maybe it's not change.

Maybe it's just growth.