For most my life, I have lived as if I were following a script. I was always adhering to an invisible set of rules, some written by myself, others imposed by those around me. Every decision felt like a step along a stiff path, one that couldn’t be altered without great consequence. My thoughts were malleable, but not in the way allowing for growth; they were robotic, reactive, and dictated by external forces rather than my true desires. I grew up shy and quiet, afraid of my ideas, of my abilities, and of showing myself to the world. I molded myself into what I thought I should be, but in doing so, I never quite fit in anywhere.
Although, fitting in was a trifling notion because life hadn’t yet hit me with all that makes it the most agonizing and gratifying experience humans know best.
Loss, heartbreak, and uncertainty cracked through the fragile comfort I had clung to for so long. I watched disease take over my family members, helpless in the face of something I couldn’t control. I experienced love that left me feeling more lost than found. I struggled with the realization I possessed no true concept of who I was, only fragments of identities I patched together over the years. It forced me to look inward, and for the first time, I was driven to ask myself: Who am I, beyond what I have been told to be?
Piece by piece, I found the answer.
The People Who Heard Me
I stumbled into my current friendships in the same way a lost puppy sheepishly pads over to an unassuming human—hesitant, unsure, but desperately searching for something to hold onto. Not only had these humans embraced me with open arms, but I soon found I was no longer just being tolerated. I was being understood, and I was cherished.
For a time too wearisome, I had grown accustomed to living in my head, terrified of letting my voice slip and being met with indifference. I was afraid speaking up would expose me as awkward, incoherent, or unworthy of being listened to.
Miraculously, these humans took the time to learn how to change me.
I started talking, even if my words felt tangled. For the first time, I could speak without the fear of sounding foolish. I could trip over my words, pause mid-sentence, lose my train of thought completely, and still be heard. My voice, which once felt like a foreign entity to me, now had a place to exist freely. They heard me in a way I had never been heard before.
And the more I grew to know these people, the more I grew to know myself.
The Stories That Taught Me
As a South Asian girl, I never expected to find pieces of myself in East Asian media. But when nothing else felt quite right, when I felt distant from the world around me and unsure of my own identity, it was the immersion of anime and Korean dramas that helped me understand the foundations of who I was.
Anime and K-dramas spoke to the part of me that inherently craves a coalescence between creative expression and autonomous purpose. So, it came as no surprise when they became my teachers. Watching Vinland Saga, a tale of inequity, loss, and revenge, was as life-changing as people described it to be. I watched Thorfinn, the protagonist, lose himself to anger, blinded by grief and vengeance, only to go on a journey leading him towards something unexpected and a little absurd: peace.
Thorfinn had seen horrors, endured unimaginable pain, and yet he learned to let it all go. He found a way to exist in the world without being consumed by the past while I had been consumed by his journey. It made me realize how much anger I laughably held onto. I harboured anger at myself and my inability to express who I was, at the world and the inadequate, trivial things, like my hair refusing to cooperate with my hair clip. It had felt like such a microscopic recast, but it changed everything. I learned to live with peace, to soften the way I viewed myself and the world, and to try a new hairstyle if nothing else worked.
Then there was Bloodhounds, an action-filled tale of two boxers courageously rejecting the injustice of Korean loan sharks. Gun-woo, the main lead, felt like looking into a mirror. He endured hardships before the show even introduced him to us, and he only faced more as the story progressed. Yet, no matter how much he suffered, he never soured. He remained one of the most respectful, soft-hearted characters, even as an incredible fighter. He could throw punches in the boxing ring with unyielding strength, yet his demeanour never stuttered.
This recognition hit me deeply. I spent an eternity feeling as though I needed to be tougher, sharper, less obliging. But Gun-woo showed me softness isn’t weakness. He showed me I could stand up for myself and fight for what I believe in without losing the kindness at my core. I didn’t have to change who I was, I just had to embrace it.
The lessons didn’t stop there.
Studio Ghibli’s dreamy worlds, the soft romances of K-dramas like 20th Century Girl—they taught me about love. Though they had graced me with countless imaginings of the love you share with another, I learned how that love could be displaced onto the Self. A leaden portion of my life had been exchanged for chasing expectations and forcing my being onto a path entirely too suffocating, but these stories showed me there was another way. They taught me love should be soft, nurturing, and patient. That the kind of love I sought in a partner was also the kind of love I needed to give myself in order to see myself fully and appreciate every part of who I was.
Without realizing it, I began to love myself into new possibilities. New futures, unbound by expectation. New experiences, risks, and opportunities I once would have shied away from. I loved myself into being boundless.
And to think, it all started with a bunch of pixels on my screen.
The Self That Chose to Change
Change can only happen if you let it. And so, I did.
I had always been malleable, easily shaped by the world around me, until I decided I no longer saw myself bending to my circumstances. I decided to choose how I changed. I let life shape me differently and sought new ways to see things, better ways. I learned to appreciate everything around me, everything that happened for me rather than against me.
Take something as harrowing as winter. For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with seasonal depression. The shorter days, the cold, the seemingly perpetual greyness. Does it all not elicit the most palpable feeling of being trapped? If you find some part of this narration confiscating your breath in unconscious agreement, allow me to gift it back by telling you there is hope. It does get better, because this past winter was the first time I hadn’t fallen victim to that godawful narration, all because I changed one thought and decided to acknowledge the light at the end of the tunnel. Literally.
Instead of dreading the early sunsets, I told myself, “Perhaps it is not so bad. Perhaps, this just means I can get into bed earlier, without feeling like I am wasting the day.” This cognitive remodelling, as simple as it seemed, made all the difference.
Now, let’s take the people who no longer have a space in my life. Once, I might have held resentment, or at least sadness. But now, I see them differently. They are my teachers. Every person who has ever walked beside me, even briefly, has taught me something valuable. And how could I be angry at someone who had been my teacher? It wouldn’t be fair, and more importantly, it wouldn’t serve me.
The End That Came Too Soon
Don’t be fooled by the temporal aspect because this change wasn’t an overnight transformation. It took time. It took so. Much. Time. Nearly a year of metamorphosing perspectives, of having long, beautiful conversations with my friends, of getting lost in anime and stories that rewired the way I experienced the world. It took a conscious effort, a constant back-and-forth with my own thoughts, before I could finally say, “I like the person I’ve become.”
Everything I have experienced, every heartbreak and change and soothing moment of realization, has rewritten me into who I am. It took allowing myself to take risks and stepping outside my comfort zone until my comfort zone became me.
I don’t know who I will be a year from now, and, for the first time in my life, that doesn’t scare me. And if you are reading this, feeling lost or stuck or unsure of yourself, I hope you take this with you:
You are not meant to fit into a single, rigid version of yourself. You are meant to grow, to transform, to find yourself over and over again in unexpected places and greet these new versions of yourself with the biggest smile on your face.
Let yourself be soft. Let yourself change. Let your life rewrite you.