Who are you?

A pretty face staring at me across the kitchen is my self portrait. She smiles at me with happy eyes. She has the look of somebody who knows wholeheartedly who they are; confident, well liked, successful, organized. But that face is a stranger to me even though it’s my own. I study these characteristics that are supposed to be mine. Who is this girl who seems like she has her life together? Is this how she appears to others? Like an Oracle, she looks like the kind of person who could answer all of my questions that I have no answers for, but sadly she cannot talk. All she can do is beam back at me a knowing look, like the way grandparents smile down at their grandchildren thinking fondly “someday you will learn.”

"Tell me what to do," I ask her anyway. "How do I accomplish the things I want? Do I ever reach my goals? Will I ever find the perfect guy, the one I'm meant to be with forever?"

"Look to yourself and you will find the answer," She seems to say. The irony tastes sour in my mouth. I'm asking a picture of myself what to do, can't look to myself more than that.

"Who even are you? What the hell are you doing with your life? Who are you going to be?" I ask myself as I stare past my smile and happy eyes, past the ebony hutch the portrait sits on, into empty space, thinking and wondering. "I'm going to be somebody... I just don't know who yet."