Who Am I?

I wake up. I feel so cold. My breathing, somewhat steady, stays consistent, but the encroaching panic soon consumes me. The weight of this new environment holds me down. I feel so smothered. It feels heavier than gravity, but light enough to keep me suspended. My body no longer feels the same. I see something shimmering in my peripheral vision. I stretch my head slightly to each side and immediately see two eloquently flashing golden fins. I also see the copious tiny golden scales that cover my brightly shining body. Perplexed, I try to find a way out. I start swimming forward with all my might. The sudden pain that surrounds my body feels like a million stabbing needles. I soon see that, a large glass-like structure stopped me from moving any further into my escape. Astonishingly, my memory floods back to me, like a suddenly rough storm surge in high seas. I am trapped. However, I lucidly remember I willed for this entrapment to occur. The fear of being too small for the big, bad, overwhelming world instills submission. I just keep circling around this home of mine, for what it felt to be years. It was yesterday during dinner when the talk of school grades and college was brought up in my family’s conversation. My parents talked about all these pressures in my life so easily, as if nothing could go wrong. The stress became almost too much, so I closed my eyes and shut out the world. I thought about how nice it would be to just retreat into a sort of familiar comfort, just like a goldfish in its fishbowl. No one expected anything from a goldfish. I gaze softly, tenuously, longingly, out the hazy, white-glass that forms the composition of my home. Through the glass I see my family. The happiness and liberation being expressed openly on their carefree faces, makes me feel so ostracized from them. Desperate to get their attention, I attempt to wave my fins furiously on the surface of the water. In my mind, I am frantically screaming for someone to rescue me. However, no one sees me, and I sink to the bottom of the bowl. My eyes can sense all of their joyous behavior and pleasant actions before me. I wish I could be carefree, like my family, but I just find it so hard to do with the discomfort of all the implemented pressures in my life. I catch a glimpse of my graded papers on the refrigerator and I become rigid. I don’t know how to deal with my fears. With my eyes, I can just imagine the reward of the self confidence these people hold dear. With my eyes, I can touch, hear, and revel in the familiarity of my home, and be a part of its surreal and natural moments. With my eyes, I can just feel the freedom and the fear slowly fading, dimming away, like it was never there to begin with. What makes me long for the impossible? And yet, the impossible seems just at an arm’s reach. However, after a long time of gazing out of the curvature of the glass bowl, I continue my circling, overcome with my comfortable fear and my default sense of reservation. I willed myself to be a goldfish; I must follow through with my quiet existence. The glass prison that surrounds me begins to shake with blunt vibrations. Bewildered, I begin to hear a dull thudding sound, muffled by the water. Someone’s tapping on the glass bowl. The thudding continuously begins to get louder…louder…louder dragging me out of a dazed persona. My only wish is for the overwhelming thudding to cease. The cacophonous tapping pulls me further…further…further out of a foggy sleep. The next thing I see is my blaring alarm clock. I wake up. I realize that I must have been dreaming. I get up and get ready for school, but I cannot help but think about this dream. Throughout the day, I pull myself through the motions: not raising my hand when I know the answer to a simple question, not being the first to go in front of the class to give my presentation, not branching out and talking to my peers, and not breaking out of the always lingering comfort of just being okay with the norm. Only, the difference being that throughout the day, I still could not get my mind off the dream. It made me delve deeper inside myself, inevitably. “Hanna, are you listening to me?” Mr. Schrat, my AP Biology teacher asks me, with an almost annoyed look plastered on his face. I snap to attention with his question pulling me out of my thoughts. “Yes, sorry,” I respond. I presume that this dream had kept me in trance-like state for almost the whole block and I immediately resort to finding the usual comfort of my solitude in attentive silence. Something has to change because now, I am awake. Realization hit me faster than a commuting, roaring gray-steeled train that thundered the ground catching the previously oblivious, patiently-waiting, persons out of their meandering thoughts. What makes me so afraid of speaking up? Why couldn't I just show people the real person inside? Who am I? Before this moment, I was just another oblivious, patiently-waiting person, just like people waiting for the next train. Before this moment, I thought I understood my place. Before this moment, I accepted to wait for something to give me incentive with the spark of confidence. Before this moment, I just got by day-by-day without confrontation or bravery. Before this moment, I didn’t know how to really make my beautiful attributes shine; like a goldfish’s ethereal shimmering body that brings cascading light seen by all eyes. Before this moment, people didn't really know me. Before this moment, I didn’t really know myself. These thoughts rolled through my mind and made me afraid of the reality of the situation. These thoughts made me afraid of the fearful goldfish I had allowed myself to become. Now, I determined myself to swim in the ocean of life with self confidence, rather than in the solitary bowl of fear.