Most of the time I do not know how to introduce myself. What I have studied and done can be listed item by item; reading it back, the person inside still seems unsaid.
The education I grew up with and the things I came across have left their marks on me. Some I agree with; some I am still thinking through. Some seemed past — I can bring them up lightly now, even as a joke — yet remembering how it was brings back exactly how it felt. “Contradictory” is not quite the word. It is more like things twisted together, twisted tight: it hurts, and I cannot say where. All this became how I make sense of things, and left plenty I cannot straighten out even for myself.
The everyday me is harder to describe. Not a particularly quiet person, but quiet much of the time; persistent when I take something seriously, and sometimes unwilling to do anything at all. There is happiness, sadness and anger, envy and guilt, small-mindedness, timidity, vulnerability. Sometimes I talk a lot — most of all when I am calm, pushing one thing further and further down until it gives an answer; often, pushed to the end, there is no answer to be found. Sometimes I do not know what to say; sometimes I cannot even tell whether I am happy. Asked which of these is most like me, I could not pick one.
Some nights I look at the moon for a while. The moon stays the same moon; the people watching it change, generation after generation. What I keep wondering about is the part left unsaid by the people of every era who looked at the same moon. I cannot answer it, so for now I just keep looking.
So sometimes I feel quite normal, and sometimes I think, maybe I am a bit odd. All of this is me, including the parts I do not like. Where I can do better, I will keep trying.