Identity.

As I’ve looked over my work from the past four years, there’s one thing that sticks out stronger than all the rest. It’s the question of identity – Who am I really?

It’s a question college has forced me to ask. And it’s a question I’m, admittedly, slow to answer. There’s the obvious, like,

I’m Kameron Wittrock.
I’m a student.
I’m the daughter of two sets of loving parents, one with a southern drawl and the other with a determination no one can stop.
I’m a sister.
I’m a (new) wife.
I’m a child of God.

But who I am goes much deeper than the artificiality of “I’m a wife.” Like, what does it really mean to be a wife? And what kind of wife am I?

I’ve realized over the last several years that I often times try to put myself in situations that are counterintuitive. I try to be overly sociable, like those people you see around who can strike up a friendship with anyone they meet. But really I’m the type of individual who’d rather stay at home, curled up under a warm blanket with a Hemingway book in my hands.

That’s not to say I don’t like people. It’s rather quite the opposite. I love people, very much. God has granted me a heart full of compassion, a thoughtless, naïve ability to trust anyone, and a desire to help. When I give someone myself, I give them all of myself; I don’t believe in halfhearted relationships and I don’t take the people I love for granted.

I’m just not the person who has fifteen friends she can call at any given second. And I’m not the kind of person who can talk to anyone at any time. I prefer being quiet, mostly in times when I don’t have anything to say. And this can confuse people; I most often take it for awkwardness.

And maybe I am a little bit awkward. But then, who isn’t?

“They” say that college is a time when you learn who you really are. And it’s true, to an extent. But I think who you are is always evolving; it has to be, or how would you grow?

If there’s anything I’ve learned over the last few years, it’s how to embrace myself for who I really am. Though I must admit, it’s an every day challenge.

There’s one other thing that college has done for me. It has exhausted me of writing. Being an English major means endless lists of papers to be written, books to be read (though I never tire of that). And so this is a project for me to get myself back into the enjoyment of writing. Not writing for a grade or gpa, but for myself and for my love of words.

So here goes.