Outlining Abby

Who am I? I know many people have wondered this over the course of their lives, but I know that for myself I have struggled with this question in my past seventeen years of life. To know yourself you must understand yourself. And to understand yourself you have to know three important things: who you were, who you are, and who you plan to be.

Though only seventeen years old I am aware that I haven’t accumulated a whole lot of history of myself so far but I’ve made enough mistakes to learn from. From my beginning as the oldest daughter of Ed and Susanne I have been in good hands. I have a loving mother and father, two younger sisters, and many wonderful pets. My mother tells me I was the most outgoing child she knew. I would talk to strangers, make new friends on the play ground, and tell anyone who would listen about my newest adventures. My outgoing and talkative personality has extremely aided me in my life so far, helping me make new friends out of strangers when I was in a new place or situation and feeling lonely and forgotten. There’s a saying, “A stranger is just a friend you haven’t met yet.” And I believe that. As I entered my pre-teen years I had made two lifelong friends that I love and cherish to this day, I plan on naming any children I may have after them. But a few of us didn’t start out as friends. In fact, at the beginning of our relationship my best friend Tyler and I were “mortal enemies”.  We soon got through this phase and it’s fun for us to remember and remind each other of the “old days” when we would call each other names and fight about nothing at all. But as I look back on myself as a pre-teen I see myself being a little bit of a bully.  I would start arguments with boys my age or older than me to prove I was as tough as them. I would do anything I could to impress upon my peers that I was as tough or tougher than they were and I see now that I never needed to prove myself.

That ties into where I am now. I’m older and try to take life one day at a time and learn from my past and my parents. I stopped wear dresses. I can now spell tomorrow and sympathy. I still love to talk to people. I control my temper better but one of the few things that haven’t changed through the years is that, deep down, I still struggle with the urge to have to prove myself. Of course, I don’t do it by picking fights or arm wrestling like I did in middle school. Instead I feel the need to accomplish something hard to establish my worth. I don’t have to be “the best” but I need to feel needed, wanted, and useful. This trait can be extremely helpful or extremely harmful. For example, in the spring, summer, and fall I work on a produce farm in Underhill. When I first started working there I knew the owners as family friends but still needed to prove to them (and possibly myself) that I could handle the physical requirements of working on a farm. I worked hard! From weeding the strawberries to stacking hay bales on a moving wagon I worked that fastest I could while still doing the job the best. At the end of that year I got a raise, a yearend bonus, and, most importantly, a place in the farm family. Now I also said it could be harmful and here’s an example of that. Between the months of November and April I have one passion and one obsession… snowboarding. To those of you who don’t ski or snowboard you don’t know what you’re missing. I live, breathe, and dream of snow-covered trails, black diamonds, and terrain parks. One of the parts I look forward to when I go for a day on the mountains is sitting on the chair lift with a friend and watching the people skiing below me. We will cheer on skiers looking down an icy slope, give a supportive yell when someone lands an impressive jump, cringe when someone takes a tumble, and sometimes giggle when someone loses a ski or plows into a fellow skier. When it’s you on the slopes you know that there’s always someone watching you from above. So as a girl snowboarder I feel the need prove I am just as good as those snowboarding guys that speed by me and do tricks. Can you guess what I do? I go faster, higher and more recklessly. Yes, I have made a few judgment errors on the slopes. I have broken a bone or two, had a bloody nose, and always come home with a few more sores and bruises then I started the day with. Has this need to prove myself made me a better athlete? Yes. Has it once or twice almost cost me my life do to hypothermia or a concussion? Yes. But I think what we want is worth the risk of life and limb.

In the future I plan to join the National Guard and serve my country. That’s what I want. I’ve been told I could be in danger if I get deployed but if I’m doing what I want, serving my country, and protecting the people I love isn’t that worth the risk too? I want to be a soldier. I want to be respected. I want to prove to everyone that I can be and I will be the best I can. I’ve had people tell me the National Guard will be good for me because I need to grow up. I’ve had a person I love tell me I’m not mature enough to do anything like that. But instead of defending myself and starting a fight, I tell them to go on, to tell me they think I’ll fail. Because all that does is fuel my fire to prove them wrong, and to prove to ever other teenager like me that struggles with self-worth that you can be anything you want if you have to the fire and the passion to prove even yourself wrong.