I guess you could say I’ve “changed”, but honestly I haven’t. I know for a fact that I haven’t changed at all. In grade 8, I was called the “emotionless one”. Why? Well, the name says it all. I never let anyone in, I didn’t show how I was feeling. I didn’t care. I was just like a blank sheet of paper. Of course I wasn’t completely emotionless, there were still times when I laughed, smiled, yelled or even cried. My friends understood me, they knew that me being silent didn’t mean an act of depression or me going through puberty. They knew that it was just a part of me. It was just a different colour.

Another part of me loves Kpop and anime. I’m obsessed with both, especially anime. I was just never able to talk to someone about what I love. Instead we talked about things my friends loved and sometimes I would talk with Ellen about the things we love (kpop). Not being able to talk about the anime loving part of me wasn’t much of a problem until I wanted to openly discuss certain episodes with other people who would understand what I was even talking about. I wanted to know other people like me. Perhaps I’m wrong. Maybe there were people like me in my old school. Maybe I just never talked to them.

My parents believe anime is useless and honestly, I can tell why they would say that. But no matter how useless it may seem, I have learned so much from it. I’ve learned from Durarara that “in order to never be bored, the human heart has to constantly evolve”. I’ve learned to never give up on my dream even if like 20 people are beating you down. I’ve learned to become stronger. I also learned how to kill a Titan. Haha, I guess that’s a useless one. But who knows?! What if Titans do walk on the Earth one day? Then my information would be pretty damn useful. I’ve learned to love someone with all my heart and feel for those in pain. And while watching, I’ll continue to love, hate and learn.

High school starts and now I’m the youngest again. Grade nine is a fun year. You get to meet so many new people. I lost all my best friends since I didn’t live in their high school boundaries. But soon enough I made friends who thought exactly like me. It was terrifying to know someone so similar, but so exciting at the same time. We made a club a few weeks into school. We made an anime club. I was finally able to let it all out. The years and years of feelings I was never able to say, rant or discuss poured out of me. I sat down beside my new anime loving friends and started crying. I started crying tears of joy. It was wonderful. That feeling. Laughing so hard you start to cry and thinking back on how long it took me just to find these people. After that, I let myself loosen up. I let every side of me show. My serious side, my anime side and my kpop side was shown in many different beautiful colours. Every part of me is right here, right now.

You see, to me, my strange “parts” of me are like the colour of my hair. I have orange locks that I bleached and brown hair that is natural. They haven’t changed. These locks of hair are still my hair. They all come from the same root. They’re just a different colour. They’re all the same.

Just like me. This is my different colour. I’m still me. I haven’t changed.

This is a colour you have never seen before.

As I write this now, I can’t help but remember my mother telling me the meaning of me name,
“Beautiful, bright colours.”