Once upon a time that still ticks to today, a girl, intermittently, like the erratic episodes of an addictive soap opera, experiences continuous struggles to find her identity. Sometimes, she knows exactly who she is, precisely what she likes, and specifically what and whom she dislikes. At other times, she adopts a self-made anonymity with herself and her personality, giving up on the search for ID entirely. Sometimes, she pretends she’s the confused main female character in the Divergent series – her own Woodley. She then remembers she possesses neither of the qualities present in Beatrice’s character; would that not classify her as ‘factionless’? Hence, she feels like she’s stuck in a whirlpool of consternation, drowning at the bottom. She’s afraid to be weak. But she also knows, she’s already as feeble as can be. So what is she genuinely fearing?
In the most definite of vague terms, she is a girl with, first and foremost, extravagant tastes. Her ambition? One of them is to be able to afford business class on flights to satisfy her expensive travel needs – comfortably and without the use of miles or time (waiting for upgrades). She wants to be able to live the elite way – not the middle-class or bourgeoisie way – but as an aristocrat – a wealthy woman. She wants to be able to drop coin after coin, bill after bill, into the charity boxes at malls. These are little things. But she also loves being a student and the productivity it brings into her being: completing a world-class education and snatching the best internships at the most renowned corporations are no easy ambitions as well. She is a person who always attains everything and anything – easily; she is a spoilt brat, in the simplest of terms. But these grateful circumstances have only made her want more, more out of everything, aspire more, and desire more, particularly when what she wants is a commodity she has nothing of. She wants to be the “buyer of the century” – without debt #trilliondollarfederaldebt. She wants to be the customer with privileges and advantages. She wants to purchase, and purchase it all – and purchase it from the most expensive aisle. She never wants to hop to the Express Counter that demands anything “equal to or less than five items”; in fact, she wants there to be a new counter in supermarkets, called the “Unlimited” counter, where she could ‘check out’ everything she wishes to purchase. She wants to drive into the Fastrak lane without gazing at the carpool track. Capitalism may have partially accounted for her materialism and consumerism addiction, but what matters is that she doesn’t give into these desires of hers; the world already has enough shopaholics.
Aside from being a self-proclaimed spendthrift, the girl is a perfectionist. She wants the best of the best. Grades are certainly included in this category; this may be the reason why she endeavors her absolute best to possess a golden transcript that has no “blemishes” (the “b” in “blemishes” also stands for “B-grades”). However, sleep is taking some more priority, as of late. She both despises white space – in the sense that she will exceed word counts easily and deliberately – and loves white space – in the sense that cleanliness and quality of white paper must be maintained; this dichotomy, sometimes, proves hilarious. If any piece of paper that she writes on has even the slightest of what appears to be a mild or even a translucent, faded ‘smudge’, she will instantly tear off that wretched, ill-fated page and throw it into the bin, if not, the paper shredder. Trees tremble at her (lack of) mercy. Indeed, she ensures that her trash bin gets filled with forests at the end of the day and perfect scores at the end of the year – another quality that she exercises perfectionism in.
Nevertheless, one idiosyncrasy that the girl adopts is that she always questions whether she really belongs to where she is. Why is she so nonchalant to YouTube makeup “dupes,” hauls, and makeup tutorials? Why does a girl who live in the most Western region of the West – in the State of California in the United States – become known as the “Eastern” girl by all members in her family back in Asia? Why is this girl obligated to marry as soon as “an opportunity becomes available” when all she ever wants is to divorce herself from the very auditory sounds of the word of such a romantic relationship, when she wants to be deliberately – blissfully – and pleasantly amnesic about all that has anything remotely to do with matrimony, when she has been told time and time again that she is simply not “marriage material”?
Now, at this very moment, this girl’s identity has immaculately descended down into oblivion. It will be remembered and revived again, but only if she wishes to remember it again. For now, she has abandoned the world momentarily. Only consent needs to be sought, to enlighten her character up once more.