Labels

We can’t always choose them, but we can learn how to use them.

My senior year of high school, I got a very pleasant surprise. Apparently, enough of my graduating class knew my name and the attitude attached to it well enough to elect me for a senior superlative. It had never crossed my mind that so many people were that aware of me, though I don’t know why. I’m not exactly quiet, small, or tame.

I still wonder sometimes how enough people thought of me, personally, that I won something. Possibly some of them did so as a cruel joke, using “unique” as a thinly veiled euphemism for “precocious, artsy weirdo”. Maybe all my real friends sat back with their ballots, and decided individually that of everyone they knew, Emily would be the hardest one to fit into a single box. I’ll never know for sure how it happened.

And that’s the story of how I became West Ashley High’s Miss “Most Unique”, 2010.

It’s still funny that that I was labeled as un-labelable. I still proudly wear that crown. Ironically, though, I’ve grown a certain fondness for labels. Together, they tell you who I am.

They reveal my identity.

Who am I?

I am a child of God.

There has never been a moment of my life when I wasn’t acutely aware of this fact.