There is no single moment in which everything changes. Moments are strung together into spiderwebs full of emotion and small adjustments to each individual's life and experience. I’ve noticed this throughout the short time I have been able to experience; I change slowly, like how summer leaves turn red and fall by the time snow comes, it doesn’t happen in a single moment, there is only obvious change when reflecting far into the past. Of course I’m not the same person I was last year or last month or even yesterday, change builds up over time. I don’t know much about myself. It’s hard to tell when I’m happy or when I’m sad, I feel everything all at once, or I feel nothing at all. So finding one thing that I admire about myself is quite difficult, it’s hard to find something good in something that doesn’t exist. Even if I admired every inch of myself it would be impossible to find a moment in which I realized that trait lived inside of me. I feel like a complete contradiction. I am calm, but also the constant stress of everything is overwhelming, so I am not calm. I am observant but also completely oblivious to almost everything. I’m only one thing in certain ways. Example: I am happy that my friends are here, but I am sad that one day, I know they will be gone, and then I’ll miss them because I once had them with me. There are so many emotions, and they are so constant and jumbled that I found that everything would be much easier of nothing existed, if everything I was feeling was really nothing at all.

The night that I stumbled upon this realization did change me, although not all at once, but I began sliding the idea into my everyday life until it consumed me. I remember that night well, I was alone in the middle of the summer after 7th Grade. Warm air filled the room, accompanied by the sound of crickets. I laid on my small bed and stared up at the ceiling. I felt like I was drowning and floating all at once. It was the type of moment that messes with your head. Everything felt perfect, there was a weird calm in the night. Nothing extraordinary happened to cause the click in my head, all of a sudden I just woke up. I realized that I didn’t have to be who I had been anymore. At the time things were rough, I was prone to panic and never wanted to get up to go to school, but something about that moment made me realize that I had more to live for and give to the world other than stress and anxiety. I began feeling far away, it was a disconnect between who I am and who I appear to be to others, both physically and mentally. I felt as if I was alone in a theater and I’m watching the movie, which is reality. I can see everything and it can make me feel things sometimes. Something came over me and I got the feeling that nothing was real, it was a calm that washed over me and seemed to cleanse every piece of who I was.

“Nothing is real.” I whispered, thinking that maybe it would make more sense to feel the words fall off from my mouth, but it only made me feel farther away. Those words weren’t mine, they came from the self that was stationed here in my room, but the thought, that one small thought, came from outer space. I felt like an alien in my own home and in my own body. It soon became a way to cope and get better, and even now, after I feel okay it’s etched into who I am. Everyone has more to offer then stress and jumbled emotion, this click made me realize that. The idea that nothing is real made me see how The simplest moments can have the best outcomes. I don’t believe I have any traits worth remembering and leaving a legacy because leaving a legacy, for me, would bring me back to reality. I admire the part of myself that brought me to the realization that nothing is real, it made to believe that I don’t need to leave a legacy make an impact on the people that I want to make an impact on. I am jumbled and stressed but above all, I am non-existent. Sometimes it's better to be nothing rather than everything, the biggest impacts can come from the smallest of moments and the smallest thoughts.