Since sophomore year of college, I have become addicted to online personality quizzes. I love knowing what color I am, which flower I am, and which planet I am. The hardest part is fiuring out which answer to put; there is never an answer that is "so totally me". I have always been the yin and yang all rolled into one big ball of confusion. Perhaps I'd have had higher self-esteem if I weren't so extremely opposite in nearly every way. I've come to be known as the loud, crazy one; I usually get a laugh out of people when I first meet them (after the novelty wears off I'm usually just the loud, brash one). But I need my quiet time. I need to be alone, I need to read and write and shut the door to my bedroom. And the quizzes that I take will give me varying results, depending on how I feel that day.
I'm not sure how to embrace this. I think it makes me indecisive and flighty. I change my mind at the drop of a hat. My passions are so wide I could never roll them into one and be perfectly satisfied. Someday I will teach, someday I will be a service coordinator; I want to write professionally, I want to go to culinary school, I want to own a bookstore.
On my good days I see the limitless possibilities ahead of me and I get excited. On my bad days I'm paranoid and nervous, and that makes me depressed. When I can't figure myself out I don't know how to act, what to say, who to be.
Mostly this happens when my yin and yang emotions are swinging like an out-of-control pendulum. One day I'm understanding and compassionate, the next I'm judgmental and cynical. When I can't decide whether to be an intellectual recluse or a free-spirited people-pleaser I am at odds with myself and get depressed. I wish I had that one thing that defined me so that I could be it wildly and unswervingly, without bending with every thought that enters my mind.
The thing about me is that I am not balanced, as you'd think my personality would allow. I am extreme at both ends: I both love and hate people, academia, church, practicality. I am overly emotionally and unnervingly reserved. And don't get me started on my opinions about love, religion, and politics. Me being unbalanced is like being in an earthquake, and it can't be fun for my friends either. That's how I know I have good friends---they stick around through it all.
Lately I've been thinking about people I really admire--Toni Morrison, Sandra Cisneros, Cassandra Van Zandt. They all possess a certain quality--something that is realistic yet romantic. They seem to be able to find poetry in life without becoming too ethereal and aloof. I think they've managed to control their yin and yang, that fighting two-faced Pisces.
I don't know where to begin to get to that place, but at least I know it's a reality and not just my own fantasy.
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