I Am Yan
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Yan Zhai, Grade 8
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Short Story
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2014
I was 7 when I was first told that growing up or - more specifically - being a teenager would be difficult. I was told during those years, people tend to lose who they are and have trouble rediscovering who they are and what they want. I used to think that would be non sense, because I knew who I was and what I wanted. I was Yan and I was 7.
A few years later I turned 13. Sometimes I’d sit down for hours and ponder what I wanted to do with my life and whether I had set my priorities right. The first year of high school was mixed up. I put my friends up too high, and my studies have been neglected because of the issues every girl clique would experience. My family didn't understand, and because of my friends I had developed depression, my moods had begun to affect them too. I couldn't tell them, but I had just wished I hadn't focused on my friends so much and maybe had spent more time with family instead. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. Everything just feels empty. I used to be a bit of a writer, and I had won awards for poetry and stories. But then the pen felt foreign in between my fingers. I used to attend art classes, and had done well. But then I just stare into the blankness of a canvas, desperate to put something on but don’t know what because I didn't know if it was still something I wanted to do with my life. Nothing felt right. I was losing inspiration to carry on, and it was a feeling of desperation and frustration. The first year of high school was full of regrets, things that I would go over and do completely differently. Sometimes I even needed to say my own name a few times just to remind myself of who I am. I was Yan and I was 13.
Now I am 18. I am currently attending the first year of university and I am studying ethics. It’s the endless battle that debates the definition of “true right” that captured my attention to study this course. I decided to study this, instead of medicine and law which were what most of my classmates picked, in hopes of gaining a further understanding of who I was and what I wanted to do, and that whether or not something was the the most morally correct thing do do. It has been 18 years, and I am still trying to discover who I am and what I wanted to do with my life.
I am Yan and I am 18.