Advanced Essay #3- Influence on Identity

Growing up, my father was a Pastor and my mom was an ordained minister. I was always in the church; Sundays would be for service, Tuesdays bible study, Fridays dance practice, Saturday's community service, and the cycle would repeat itself. I was taught many different things growing up as a child, from don’t cross the street without looking twice and always pray before going to bed. Even after my parents divorced, they still remained consistent with keeping my sister and I in church. As I got older my mom began giving me bits and slices of freedom, allowing me to make my own life decisions. But, one thing she always reminded me of was to value my body and my virginity. I didn’t think much of it, though, simply because I was more focused on the new episode of “That’s So Raven” coming on TV than having sex.

The older I got, the more I experienced different encounters and I finally discovered that more kids were having sex than I thought. By then, I had made the promise to God and myself that I would save my purity and virginity until I married to have sex. Although this was a great goal set for myself, I felt like I didn’t belong. The people around me were in Corner A, stacked like sardines while there I was in Corner B. I felt like a needle in a haystack. Everyone looked at me as if I had done something to them, as if I thought I was better than them.

I remember in the fifth grade, when the beginning of me feeling like I didn’t belong due to who I was and what I believed in, someone came up to me and said “You’re weird for waiting to have sex. Don’t you get it, nobody will want you by then. You’ll be all old and dried up and disgusting.” I could feel my lips twist and my brown skin boil like eggs in scorching water. The tears began to swell, but I swallowed them back down preventing them from revealing themselves. All I could do was run away. I ran far, and didn’t looked back, I needed to escape.

In a TED Talk featuring Thandie Newton, she begins off her talk by saying “The self is a projection based on other people’s projections.” This particular quote supports my claim on how our identity is a reflection on external and internal influences. Thandie is saying the projection of oneself is dependent upon the projections of others. This isn’t necessarily negative thing, because some projections can be positive ones. But, what I can say is one can decide exactly which projections of others they want to be reflected upon them. For example, I decided to choose to wait until marriage because of the influence from my parents.

Over time, though, I became comfortable with who I was. Oscar Wilde said “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” The only person that I knew I could be was me, and I was great at it. I had finally been content and fully loved myself, and once I’d done this other began to do the same towards me. I learned how to use who I was as my strength and not a weakness, and it felt amazing. I know that I am constantly changing as an individual, but I’m confident that I have figured out the basics of my identity and who I am. I may not belong to a specific group of people, but I belong to myself and am perfectly fine with that.