How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Myself :: Personal Narrative, Essay About Myself

Ariel and Marie were sisters. Marie was two years younger than Ariel, one year younger than me, and I fit between them nicely, in age as well as personality. They lived in two different hemispheres of existence, and I hovered around the equator, bouncing from pole to pole depending on which sister I was with. For me, Ariel was the personification of cool. Even her name was cooler than mine. My name was wooden, it fell to the ground with a thump, but Ariel's danced. When she scratched the energetic verticals of her name--Ariel Acosta--the letters became edgy and hip. My swirling cursive seemed clichÃ… ½ in comparison. I liked hanging out with Ariel because she made me feel cool too. I was insecure with my conformity. I felt guilty that I owned clothes from the Gap, that I had cried at Titanic, that I worried about my hair. With Ariel I felt validated. If Ariel thought I was cool, well, then maybe I was. Ariel was everything I wanted to be. She was brilliant, and she seemed to know something about everything worth knowing about. She shopped at thrift stores and wore big black boots and clothes that didn't match and her thin blond hair was spiky and went every which way. She played the violin and the piano. She was a photographer. She went to Guatemala for the summer. She was into hardcore, ska, punk, and everything "indie," she was straight edge and went to lots of shows. She dated guys much older than she. She liked Vietnamese food and watched soccer on the Spanish-language station. Ariel was unpredictable, and I loved discovering new facets of her personality. She often seemed lost in her thoughts, which I was convinced were deeper than mine, and I was always dying to hear them; to be admitted into the club of deep thinkers. Ever her fallibilities were infallible to me; even the dorky things were cool when she did them. (She confided in me about her profound childhood love for New Kids on the Block--Jordan was her favorite.) We went to used CD stores, where I loved the bargain bin and the soothing click click sound of the practiced browser hunting for gems. She introduced me to Pho, Vietnamese noodle soup, and I was incredibly relieved that I actually liked it. This was hope for what I saw as my bland and unsophisticated palate, which preferred pizza and mashed potatoes to more worldly cuisine.