Author: Ivan Marinić, III. gimnazija, Osijek
The first time I have let someone influence my perception of myself, I was probably also unaware of it. And since my first breath, my first view of the world, I was unaware of what was lying underneath. And there could be nothing, who knows? What I realized is that the world around you changes with you, it’s fluent and vivid. Like a small child playing; one moment it’s hopscotch, the other it’s tag. Maybe the child decides to bury his head in the sandpit, maybe he chooses to sort the grains and pebbles of dirt by color and density, temperature and moisture. But that’s what I came to realize after being exposed to the mercy of the cruel and cold environment of the high school eco-system. And when I first stepped into class, the first day of school, the stench of adolescent sweat, the hormones flying and causing sparks, the confusion and desperation, they all clogged my nose and blocked my sinuses. I didn’t observe the kids, their judging faces all slipped my memory and travelled straight to my subconsciousness where they would continue to live and leech off of me for the remainder of my life. One of the kids told the others I look weird, and they all seemingly (also, obviously) agreed. One of them said that my clothes are ugly, the other said my face is very interesting and pretty. At this point it didn’t matter to me, I’d learned to filter out the noise and focus on my own thoughts rather than others’. When they all quieted down, the deed had been done, and it had been done in mere minutes. Their first impression of me settled down and was filed and archived in their brain. This first impression wouldn’t ever change; rarely, it would be adjusted just a little bit, just enough to encompass some new information or fact that they thought they learned about me, but for the most part – this was it. The foundation has been laid, and there was no changing it. The thought of this upset me – it made me afraid. I can’t do anything to make someone think differently of me. But the more despondent I grew with the fact, the more I learned to accept it. Maybe my own perception of myself (what we usually call our identity) was also mutated and constructed by my own perverted and twisted views of the soul, mind and body. And with this I realized that what I think of myself would never be what I truly am. Not only me – everyone who ever lived and still lives – can never truly perceive their identity as a grown, organic being; adorned with certain clothes and jewellery, crowned with crowns of olive branches and blessed with sculpted facial bones and random, sporratic locks of gold, rose and amber in their soft hair. It is a mere illusion of what once longed to be – a soul destined to spend a lifetime in a “flesh prison”, beautiful in its naturality and purple linings of silk and velvet. It is only – a silhouette.
Then, the bell rang, and most of the class were staring and laughing, snickering at my dumb facial expression for a good ten minutes.
