u/Ok_Track2498

What exactly is a personality? Is it shaped by our actions, or our thoughts?
One could argue that a person who is always kind to others has a "kind personality," but what if they always think cruelly of others? What then? And on the reverse side, a person who is cruel to others cannot be considered kind, but what if their intentions are always positive?
To add to this conundrum, can a person's personality change over time? How quickly? How much time has to pass between one set of thoughts or actions to another before a person can have a new personality?

All of these questions aside, now I will get to the relevant part. I am a reader. I have shelves filled with books of all sizes, age ranges, and themes. I am also a viewer. Countless hours spent watching movies, shows, and films come to mind. When a main character is brave, melancholy, an optimist, or shows any other defining characteristic, I often find myself adopting those traits. 

When I watch British shows, my inner voice adopts a British accent. This not only changes my inner voice, but it also changes the words I write with, and the cadence in which I speak. When I read something tragic or despondent, I begin looking at the world around me with a pessimistic outlook on life. When I reread The Hunger Games, I adopted Katniss's outlook on the world around her (and me by extension.) When I reread The Giver, I began looking at the sanitized media around me with disdain. I began to enjoy and analyze the simplicities of what it means to be human. And when I read romances or slice of life stories, I become bubbly and spirited. 

The most recent addition to my collection of stolen personalities is the book The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien. Currently, I feel melancholy. A deep sadness permeates my very being, and I can't do a thing about it. Was I a war veteran? No, and I do not claim to feel anything like PTSD or genuine suffering from trauma. However, I do feel a sense of loss. I feel the senselessness of war. I feel the regrets of a life not chosen. I feel how a memory haunts someone for decades down the line despite having only lived one. This feeling has only two ways which to leave me. The first is to let it fade away slowly, letting each hour gently chip away at the personality that I've cloaked myself with. The other is to read something else. 

But the personalities never leave me. I look at my shelf, at each cover and title, and if I really focus and let myself feel the story rather than think of it, I can be sucked back into it. I can stare at The Giver and feel the dull gray world that Jonas is escaping from, I can look at Bird Box and feel the desperation of a mother torn from her world and forced to survive a foreign threat. It's like each book has a tangible aura around it. It's possible that I could pick a book to read when I need to be smarter, and more courageous, or another when I need to be introspective. But putting on all of these personalities leads me to wonder, is there an original underneath? Or am I just a collection of stolen personalities?

Personally, it would be nice to get great scores, but I’m okay getting anything above passing at this point. I’m curious if y’all feel similarly. I also feel a weird sense of sadness and joy at the same time about ending my final AP season. Thoughts?

Also, what AP classes did y’all take this year to finish it all off? I took AP World, APHUG, Lit, and Stats.

I am afraid of change. 

It doesn't matter how small. When faced with the idea, I always feel that familiar aching emptiness in my stomach, that dry burning in my throat, and a hollowness in my core. 

It's happening again.

I'm fifteen years old, facing my mother in the living room.
"They're fine the way they are! We don't need new ones, and these fit the couches perfectly!" I grumble. My mother, less convinced than I am, refuses to budge. They are, after all, dusty curtains that she only bought because they were discounted at Walmart. Logically, she should get rid of these sun-bleached pieces of fabric, so why doesn't her daughter agree?

Flashes of childish screams and rapid footsteps around the house, games of hide-and-seek, the way the sunlight distorts and scatters through the red and green covering the window. The smell of them when I pushed them open, greeted with a spring morning. The rough feel of them touching my nose as I hid behind them, wrapped in their safety. 

The beautiful red and gold tassels now hang limp, folded over my mother's arms. The windows and walls blush and shrink away, their dust and grime revealed to the world. Unsurprisingly, my amateur interior decoration opinions fail to sway my mother, and I am sent out to the garbage bin. I hold them in my hands, feeling the warmth radiate into me from the sun-soaked curtains freshly ripped off the wall. Every step seems to make the world duller. I arrive at the grave of these beautiful tatters of polyester and lay them to rest. 

Tomorrow, there will be a new set of blue and gray curtains obstructing the window. 

And again.

I'm seventeen years old, staring at the new fridge being dragged inside. No opinions were asked, and the food inside our lovely old fridge was beginning to spoil, so aesthetic choices were the last of their priorities. My parents, smiling at the prospect of unboxing something new, look to me with eager eyes. Look at what we've brought you! It's new and shiny, and so much better than what we once could afford.

Im not a monster. I push back the emptiness and force a smile. "It's great!" I say with strained excitement. An hour later, the new fridge is now sitting in its usurped throne. The silver demands attention. It reflects the reds, browns, yellows, and greens of the kitchen and distorts them into a mess of color. I confront the invader and stand before it. The person staring back at me seems to share some of that shininess. That's why I don't look at her. 

I go and visit our newly decommissioned fridge outside. The sun seems to reveal an entire wonderland of dust bunnies on the top of the fridge. It seems so short, cowering before the silver monster who ousted it. I take my time opening the doors and drawers, clicking the useless buttons, until a truck comes to haul it away. I watch the black fridge fade to a speck, then turn back inside.

And again and again and again.

Im eighteen years old. No longer a child, not quite an adult, but content living in the limbo of the in-between. Everything is an opportunity to prep for college now.
I bought a water bottle yesterday. I will buy a new computer tomorrow and leave my well-loved one behind. I talk for hours with my roommate, and though we both avoid the topic, we know that moving in for the first time will be a moment we can't go back from. When I take that first step, when I wake up in a place other than home, that feeling of loss and emptiness will become permanent. After that moment, I will be the one carrying the embers of my childhood away.
I imagine my return, that first semester over and done. I walk into my home, and find that this time, I am the one who doesn't belong.