When asked who I am, I really don’t know how to respond. I feel that I am constantly struggling to find my identity out of the billions of people on Earth. Being a Filipino/German American, I never feel that I fit into either world. A lot of what I do is because I am in search of finding myself, my likes, my dislikes, my inherent traits and other factors that make me, Me. For example, since coming to UCLA, I have begun to research my Filipino ancestry by joining Samahang organizations to engulf myself in my culture. I do wonder, however, how much of my identity relies on my Filipino heritage. What I do know about who I am, however, is what I don’t want to become. I find it easier to construct myself by exploring what I DON’T want to be and afterwards exploring why. I don’t want to be a hypocrite, preaching to others about how to run their lives when my own life is nowhere near being perfect. I value my integrity above all else because I hold myself responsible for all of my actions. I don’t want to wake up one day, gray and old, wondering what I did with my life, regretting not doing something. I seek adventure and new experiences in life, whether that is seeing new sights, feeling new feelings, and doing what hasn’t been done before. I don’t want to be another face in the crowd, to be simple a nine digit number on paper, or another demographic. I just don’t want to be like everyone else. The mask I wear everyday reflects my feelings of lacking a true identity. Though it is blank, its emptiness allows unlimited possibilities to be shaped in the future. My identity is constantly changing as time progresses but I don’t fear it because I know change is growth. I may not know exactly how I identify myself, but I feel that is what makes me who I am.
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