I am a one-woman welcoming committee and a therapist without a license. If I notice someone looks down or needs help, I will make an effort to engage with them, and even besides that, I am always friendly and love creating conversation. I've always had a talent for communicating and connecting. As an avid traveler, even across different cultures and languages, I always find a way to communicate with people somehow. My goal in connecting with people is to really understand them and the problems they might be facing and to offer them comfort. I believe this desire to help comes from my own experience of feeling alone and different. Although I now have great friends and have always had a supportive family, there was a time when I felt I had no friends my own age. Because I was so close with my family members, who are all much older than me, I only felt connected to an older generation and had different priorities until the second half of high school. While my peers were concerned about how they looked or how to be popular, I was more worried about the kid eating in the bathroom at lunch or alone in the library after school. Still, I felt secure in having a solid moral foundation and a great family base to rely on.
My closest brother told me he was moving to China. I was ecstatic about his new life adventure. Still, a piece of my heart broke, knowing that the only person I felt truly understood my sensitive personality and creative mindset was leaving. This is when I first started noticing my anxiety developing. Suddenly everything seemed a lot harder. I knew I was lucky: I had a supportive family, the good fortune to have financial stability, and l was going to a wonderful school, and yet something was missing. At the beginning of high school, the anxiety was mild, then before I knew it, at the beginning of sophomore year, I felt trapped, like in a maze throughout my head; the pressure of high school didn't help. I had to get a handle on my anxiety, so I decided to do homeschooling and work through things. During that time, I learned a lot -- I realized how much my brother's leaving impacted me, and I learned to grieve, learned coping techniques, and most importantly, I learned to appreciate the things I had and be more independent. Homeschooling really helped with this because I was forced to learn things on my own.
Now, I am graduating college, I feel like a new person, someone who can be there for others but also be there for myself. I still struggle with anxiety, but I use it to my power because it is powerful. I use my overthinking to my benefit.
I am proud of where I am. Without my empathy, I wouldn't be me.
In hindsight, I see that my experiences with anxiety, getting along with older people, and feeling like the odd one out have all helped me to have empathy and understanding for others who also have been through challenges in their lives or don't fit in. I was lucky enough to later find true friends in college who thought the same way that I did. I'm excited to conquer the next big challenge in my life -- a career -- with the confidence and the skills to be successful and show my true capabilities in both the workplace and social settings. I've always wanted to be in the workforce since my freshman year of high school, and I am ready to fulfill my dream and begin what I see as the "real" start to my life.
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