I feel as if for the first time in my life I am approaching a personality stasis. The outer workings of who I am, the way I present myself to the world, lag by enough that I have a few years left of apparent change within me, but I sense that my inner self is fully formed. They say that you stop developing as a person around the age of 25, which I guess would put me on the right track. I’m 23; I have two years to go for the outer to catch up with the inner.

It’s not as if I don’t have self discovery left to do, it’s just that I do not think there is any self discovery left that can surprise me. I have experimented with all of the ways that my sexuality and gender can collide, I taken one passion and pursed it, abandoned it, and moved on to others. I know who I am from the inside out, and maybe a new Me will creep out and take over or maybe it won’t, but either way, I’ll be the same.

I have a friend who believes in an Ultimate Self that we should be striving to find in ourselves. She believes that we may be changing right now, but eventually we should reach an end of the road where we are complete. My insides writhe when I hear this said, or even when I read the words that I wrote down on this page.

I will never be complete, because what is life if it doesn’t inspire a level of change each and every day, incremental differences which will build up until we become totally new.

And yet.

And yet I do not know where else there is for me to go, because I’ve reached a level of self-absolution and inner confidence that doesn’t leave any growth in these areas or any other. I have explored my mind so fully that I can no longer be surprised by what lurks around the corner. Even if there were changes, it wouldn’t result in a fundamental change to isabel, the person. It would simply be a change of the exterior, a modification on an already solidified foundation.

It’s been nearly two years now since I last climbed up onto a roof and sat with my legs dangling over the side, and it feels like those days were the ones where I was finding myself. Finding myself because I was still becoming a real person, but also because I was able to look out over the world and choose who I wanted to be. Stuffy apartments where I’m hidden in my bedroom don’t give me the space to become.

I twist inward on myself here, doubling down on each thought until I wear it from a jagged bottle and into sea glass, a beautifully wretched collectible. It’s my own thought patterns that have worn a Me so dense that there’s no room for other to penetrate. I have reached the end of becoming, and now I am simply complete in all the ways that matter. No matter how much I seem to change, I’ll remain the same bit of glass that I am now at 23.

I’m not sure if I like who I am, but I guess I don’t have a choice.

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