ABOUT ME
Why I Have Never Written An “About Me”
About Me — Supritha
Aren’t they awesome? The About Me stories?
I love them. I love how there’s so much more to people’s lives than the blurry layers that are out here for us to see. I love how in this world — the world that houses millions and millions of people — no two person’s story is the same. No two lives are the same.
Yet, intertwined in this path of figuring out something called “life”.
The idea of having an “About Me — Supritha” pinned to the top of my profile has been one that I have obsessed over for quite some time now. I might have dreamt of it getting a dreamy bunch of claps too.
Let’s see.
Stories, I do have. Lots of stories to tell, so many that people who read what I write sometimes feel I’m older than I let out. But it’s true. I’m eighteen. Too young to call myself an adult and too old to call myself a child.
I’m a young adult.
My life evolves at a rate faster than a caffeine-fueled college student during finals week. And I… evolve at a rate faster than that. The person I am today might not be the same one you see tomorrow. The ‘about me’ I write today might not exactly be applicable tomorrow (except for the past events).
I’m at the fastest period of growth in my life.
The period of late teens and early twenties where most of the figuring out happens. Where life seems to take on new meanings every day. Where nothing seems to make sense and everything seems to make sense, all at the same moment.
I’m not sure how apt this would be a year later but I want to try. Try to give you a glimpse of an “about me”. Try to perhaps give myself a glimpse of an “about me” of today before it gets a chance to change.
I had possibly one of the coolest childhoods ever (maybe that’s why I’m so cool today).
For the first 14 years of my life, my home was an apartment with 4 floors. I lived with my parents on one floor and my grandparents were in the topmost one. We — all of us in the apartment — were like a family. One single extended family.
And the apartment as a whole including the stairs was our home.
I was a silent kid, an introvert maybe. But definitely an extrovert to the people who I let inside my world. I usually preferred my own company. My room was enough and I, was more than enough for me.
During the early years (when I was 4 to 8 years old) we kids from our apartment were taken to the bus stop together (most of us went to the same school) every morning and in the evening, my grandmother and a few other elders picked us up from our buses but we didn’t go to our homes. Not yet.
It was snack time. The elders took turns and got them ready every day, for every kid. For the next 30 min, all you can hear is little excited voices telling you stories of how their day spanned out, trying to squeeze in extra lines amidst all the munching.
“Patti patti (grandmother in my mother tongue) look at my hand, I got a staar. My teacher gave me a star for being quiet!”
Once the snacks are all done, we move about trying to get in some play. We run around aimlessly, laugh for no reason, and play games in worlds that are born straight out of our imagination. It was fun. A time when terms called “exams” hadn’t started blocking our minds.
The holiday season was the best.
We typically lived on the stairs during that period. Usually, it was only me and one other friend two years younger than me. The rest would have gone to their natives. But we both were pretty good by ourselves. Not pretty good, we were the best.
We didn’t exactly have the same interests. But that never stopped us from bonding and from listening to the other person talk about her interests. We literally adored each other (we still do).
We did things very differently from what others of our age did. While others woke up as late as possible, we woke up at 5, to have extra fresh minutes of fun (but we slept early, don’t worry). We were so into building a life we didn’t need a vacation from. We even got timetables ready to make sure that both of our interests got equal shares of time.
And during the flood and summer season, there would be times when we would have to go 3 to 4 days without power and water except for drinking water. That was a time when we all settled in the terrace once twilight set in and had our dinners there. Not having access to tech wasn’t necessarily an issue when you had people around you to entertain you.
We definitely had problems too but it was at the end perfect.
My childhood was perfect, in its own way.
Soon we graduated from kids to teens. The exam stuff came in. Some of us shifted houses. And that particular time was lost but we just started building new worlds. Separately this time, as we each took the paths that belonged to us.
The one year that had the most effect on my life as of now would be… 2023.
I was told my soft voice would get me nowhere. I was told my silent nature would get me no opportunities. I was told my thin frame marked me weak. I was told so many things.
Though I always knew the words of random people meant nothing, 2023 was a year when I really started to realize it was all completely worthless. It meant nothing. People who have never lived our lives or know us in the first place can’t really tell us how to live it. Some can, yes, but not everyone I suppose.
Also, 2023 was the year I felt lost for the first time in my life.
I found my way back, got lost again, got sad over the fact that it had repeated itself, but then found my way back again, and realized that there is some truth in “There will always be a way back”.
Yes.
I will become a fully-fledged adult soon.
Sometimes these days, I just look in the mirror trying to find a few adult-like vibes here and there but all that looks at me back is a girl with frizzy hair, a thin frame (5 years of yoga and workouts does do certain things to someone. Just an fyi) and a dazzling smile.
And I go “Woahh”.
I started writing on Medium 2 years back during my last year of high school. I didn’t exactly expect to get my writing noticed. I didn’t exactly think the professional writers over here would read my writings. I didn’t exactly expect to find… a family.
But I have one now. A very special one.
Why did I start writing?
I started for myself, to document my quirky thoughts so that I could have a reason to smile later. People find my ability to smile for no reason very weird. So yes, I found a way to find reasons.
But when people started reading what I wrote, I got a new purpose. To make them smile too, at least once before they move to the next webpage. How lovely would that be?
My life’s one of the biggest purposes written right there.
An “About Me — Supritha” written right here.
Don’t judge my ability to make you smile before you actually get a chance to smile at my ability!
