I May Not Know Who I Am But I Know Who I’m Not

Cover Designed by Josie Hinke

I knew by Thanksgiving of my first year that I needed to leave my Catholic university. 

I’m not Catholic, not even religious, and it’s still a bit of a mystery how I ended up there in the first place. My parents don’t have much in common, but a shared wariness toward organized religion is a thread that runs between them. 

They were cautiously supportive when I made my decision to attend. Something in me must’ve known the wrongness of it because I remember waiting until the day before Decision Day to make the final choice. It wasn’t my first-choice school or even my second, but between the scholarships I was offered and the proximity to home (once I chickened out of moving across the country to New York) it just made the most sense.

I arrived on campus a week before the rest of the student body, joining fellow Honors Program students and ROTC kids to move in early. My dorm was nice, in the far back corner of a big X-shaped building, which meant it was one of the biggest and most private rooms. It had big windows on one wall overlooking the tree-lined parking lot below. It had a sink. I put up a curtain around my bed—some semblance of privacy that I might have once my roommate moved in a week later. I hung film photos of my friends and family on the wall behind my bed. 

Photo by Josie Hinke

I cried a normal amount for a teenager leaving home for the first time. I plastered on a smile and tried to socialize with the honors kids. I stayed close to one girl with a kind smile. I quickly learned that she was devoutly religious, but I didn’t want to let our differences get in the way of what could be a blossoming friendship. We were both eighteen-year-olds, terrified of starting this new chapter of our lives, and that was enough to get us through the week. 

Toward the end of the week, the honors cohort attended a dinner together in Downtown Portland. We had spent our time together talking about sustainability and food systems, so, to celebrate the end of a week well spent, we were indulging in a farm-to-table feast on the university’s dime. 

We sat around the table. I don’t remember how it came up, but I remember confiding in someone sitting close to me that I was worried about feeling out of place at the school because I wasn’t Catholic. “Oh, don’t even worry about it, I’m not Catholic either,” she said. Thank God. I felt something inside me lift. A coil in my stomach untwisting. “I’m Lutheran,” she finished. 

The table started talking about their confirmations, laughing and joking—a 2000-year-old inside joke that I would never be a part of. I excused myself and cried in the bathroom. 

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Wrongness has always been a more distinct and recognizable feeling for me. 

My partner and I toured twelve apartments before finally finding the one we live in now. With each of the twelve before it, we knew within five minutes (or fewer) that the places were wrong for us. It was a sense, so innate and indescribable, almost biological.

We would smile and nod at the real estate agents and property managers who were showing us around, but the second they turned their backs, we would look at each other, communicating wordlessly, No, not this one. 

When we finally found our dream apartment, we still waffled on it for a few days, calling up both of our mothers for counsel, because the idea of declaring something right is so much scarier than declaring it wrong. 

I think it comes down to a numbers game. There are thousands of wrong colleges, millions of wrong apartments, billions of wrong partners; and there should hypothetically be only one right choice for all of these. One dream school, one dream home, one soulmate. 

Photo by Josie Hinke

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In elementary school, I ended up in a stalemate argument with a classmate about whether or not fairies existed. He wouldn’t believe me without proof that they did, and I wouldn’t concede because it was impossible to prove that they didn’t. For all I knew, the proof I needed was out there somewhere, just waiting to be discovered. 

Rightness and wrongness are the same way. It takes a million stars aligning to make something right, and only a few red flags for something to turn wrong. Just like the existence of one fairy would have proved me right, one red flag can be enough to set us on high alert and have us questioning everything about something that seems otherwise right by all accounts. 

Something I’ve been looking more closely at recently is my trepidation towards the times in my life when everything seems to be going right. The idea of something being “too good to be true” is enough to incite real fear. When we first committed to our dream apartment, I was 50/50 on whether or not it was a scam. It wasn’t until my first night in the apartment that I finally started to believe that it was real. Being too right can be enough to make something feel wrong.

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I’ve never been someone with one dream job, or even a dream lifestyle. Some days I wake up and daydream about being a published author, living in a big city, wearing tweed, and drinking coffee like my life depends on it. Other days I dream of a cabin in the woods with chickens in the backyard and acres of land to explore. Sometimes I’m convinced that my true calling is to be a baker and spend my days engulfed in a cloud of flour and smelling of yeast. 

It’s like the fig tree quote by Sylvia Plath. At times, I feel paralyzed by the infinite choices I have to make daily. Do I write or knit or read or draw? What can I do today to get me closer to one of the branches of the tree? What if I’m reaching for the wrong fruit? Outstretching my fingers towards one branch means reaching farther away from another.

The only comfort is that I do know when I’ve found a fruit that’s gone rotten. 

I may not know who I am, but I know who I’m not. My early twenties so far have been a journey of self-discovery through trial and error, with an emphasis on error. I’ve learned so much more about myself by figuring out what feels bad instead of what feels good. 

I may not know what I want to be when I grow up, but I can tell you what I don’t want to be (kill me before I ever start working in tech, that’s for sure). I may change my mind about what my favorite hobby is more quickly than the changing of the seasons (speaking of, writing is such a fall hobby), but I can tell you what I’ve tried and am totally fine with leaving behind. A short list includes bouldering (too many tech bros), top rope climbing (I’m scared of heights), and sailing (it stressed me out in a way that reminded me of learning to drive a car). 

Of course, as someone with anxiety, it can sometimes be hard to tell the difference between irrational apprehension towards trying something new and a true mismatch with my values, personality, or lifestyle. And sometimes, things come and go. What felt so right during one period of time can be less compatible with a different version of myself. 

But even I, irrational and anxiety-ridden, can often feel the difference between anxiety and wrongness, even if I can’t describe it. My anxiety looms the largest before I’ve begun something. If I’m on the right path, it will shrink back as I forge ahead. If something is truly wrong, the anxiety worsens the farther along I get, not lifting with the comfort of familiarity and repeated exposure. 

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The first week after transferring to my new university—a year after that first dinner with the honors cohort—I remember biking around my new neighborhood, the air a perfect 60 degrees with just the right amount of crispness, the leaves just starting to turn golden and fiery, and feeling like I finally knew what it felt like to make the right decision.

It looked nothing like the future I had imagined for myself even a year before, let alone three, let alone five, but just for a moment, I knew with conviction that I was reaching toward the right branch. 

Photo by Josie Hinke

All this to say: sometimes discovering who we’re not can be just as powerful as discovering who we are. Every encounter with something wrong for us eliminates one of the branches of the fig tree, and in a world ripe with an oversaturation of options and decision fatigue, elimination can be a relief. 

The weight of the world becomes a little lighter with each potential future we free ourselves from. My hope is that five or ten years from now, my tree may have fewer branches, but my view of them will be clearer; my vision not muddled by the rotting fruits in my periphery.