My Story

I have had my own experience with discovering myself, which, in fact, was a big part of my inspiration for writing this blog. I am the third of four kids, and was always the trouble maker in my family. The oldest child, Dan, is the only boy in the family. He excelled in school and sports, and is now a fighter pilot and officer in the Navy. Sarah, the oldest sister, is the overachiever and the closest to perfection. With flawless grades and an intelligent kind of humor, she’s now graduating from a private university in San Diego with plans to become a physical therapist. I am the tragically doomed artistic child (there has to be one, right?); I am the orchestra nerd, the antisocial reading and writing obsessed odd ball. Don’t get me wrong, the family loves me and always will no matter how quirky I am, but I was always the different one, which, perhaps, has played a part in my fascination with individuality. The youngest, Hannah, is the silly, bossy one with an attitude she’s proud of. She just (literally, this past weekend) made the decision to attend a school in Boston next year, where she will be playing soccer and likely maintaining her high GPA (congrats sis!).

That all has to be understood in order to explain why I am where I am. My family lived in Seattle for the first 7 years of my life, and then moved to the suburbs just north of the city. Now, however, I’m in a rural area of Pennsylvania, away from everyone and everything I knew and loved. Even given the weird-kid syndrome, I still love my family and my home, so no, they aren’t the reason I left. I didn’t want to run away from them or start again, necessarily, but rather wanted to try my own thing and be on my own.

I’m a campus tour guide at my university, and a facilitator for our freshman orientation program. Everyone I meet: friends, students, prospective students, parents, teachers, staff, all ask me the same thing – to the point that I’ve debated getting it tattooed on my forehead so I no longer have to answer: “Why the heck would you come here from Seattle?” I know, Seattle is beautiful. And I know, this area of Pennsylvania has a constant, inevitable scent of manure. But I love it here. Every time I give them the same sort of answer: “I wanted to come to the east coast to try something different, be out on my own, do my own thing,” and yes, I mean it when I say that, but there’s more to it than that. When surrounded by people who’ve known me since childhood, it’s harder to focus on who I am now versus who I was then. Coming far away from home gave me the opportunity to find myself by myself. Being alone, truly alone, gave me time to focus on just me, not the “me” people other people think of.