The wind was yelling at everyone and everything in sight. Daring itself to be heard and felt. Waves slapped at the edges of the rocks and hurled themselves over the dock as the wind twisted them to its liking. With every moving mountain my body swayed in time to the raging water. At least it appeared to be raging. On the surface it was letting itself be affected by the wind. It was being changed and controlled by the pressure of the air around it, but deep down it was still exactly as it always was, calm and beautiful and genuine. Deep down at its core the pressure of the outside world couldn't touch it. When I am trying to impress people, when I am betraying who I really am, I am like water. I am twisted and contorted by what's around me, by the force of peer pressure that causes chaos on the surface. Huge, tumbling, chaotic waves that leave people thinking I'm dangerous or out of control, but deep down I am still me. Deep down at my core people can't get to the real me, but what's under the surface doesn't always matter if I let the wind control my path. What's deep down at my core won't matter if I don't force it to take control of the surface. But sometimes, instead of doing just that, I follow the path of the wind. I let people see who I think they want to see. I try too hard to be the perfect surface, while ignoring the reality underneath it. I try too hard to be the perfect version of me, when instead I should be trying not to let other people decide who that person is. Instead of being what other people think is the perfect version maybe I should be the genuine one. Why hide the real me? For fear that I be called dramatic, annoying, unsuccessful…I know now that people can say what they want because all of those things are better than being fake. They can say what they want, call me what they will. I'm proud to be me. I'm proud to think the way I do, even if it is different. I'm proud to feel things so strongly, even if it does make me overly emotional. I'm proud to be the person I am, and from now on I refuse to let the wind rattle my surface. People may not always understand the way I process, the way I think, the way I feel, but I don't understand the way they do those things either. Everybody is their own body of water, and everybody has something different way down deep in their depths. This is me...Imperfection makes me feel dizzy, loss of control makes me feel helpless, and emotion gets to me overwhelmingly. That's why I began to write, to write about the world in the way I see it. To write about the things that my imagination creates. To write about things in a way that can make people stop and think about things that they've never thought about before. One day I want to travel the world and meet all the different people, and see all the different places. I want to write about them, and the way they make me feel, the way they make me think. I want to talk to people in other countries. People with other cultures and mindsets. I want to hear those people's stories. I want to hear their ideas and their beliefs. I want to open myself up to all the things in the world, without forgetting the things deep down beneath the surface of my water.