Quotes About Self-discovery

I've always known who I am. I might not work perfectly, or be like them, but that's okay. I know I work in my own way.

I knew this feeling, the 2 a.m. loneliness that I'd practically invented.

Then what are you like, Annabel? he shot back. A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all.

That's what this has been all about for you, correct? Make it clear. That you and me--it was nothing more that you'll have with Spinnerbait boy, or the guy after that, or the guy after that. Right? Yeah, I said, shrugging. You're right. He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

I told you, everyone understands a quest.

Being brave and self-confident doesn't necessarily start inside...It starts with the rest of the world, and it leads back to you.

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.

When I pictured myself, it was always like just an outline in a coloring book, with the inside not yet completed. All the standard features were there. but the colors, the zigzags and plaids, the bits and pieces that made up me, Halley, weren't yet in place. Scarlett's vibrant reds and golds helped some, but I was still waiting.

All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.

When I got to my own face, I found myself staring at it, so bright with dark all around it, like it was someone I didn't recognize. Like a word on a page that you've printed and read a million times, that suddenly looks strange or wrong, foreign, and you feel scared for a second, like you've lost something, even if you're not sure what it is.

I'd come here planning to leave as soon as I could. It was a pit stop, not a destination. I had my whole life mapped out. So what happened? I guess that map didn't turn out to be mine after all

The dead aren't the only ones who vanish: you, too, can disappear in plain sight if enough is taken from you. I was still missing, in many ways. And I wasn't sure I wanted to be found.

I tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works out for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragments can't help but, make a whole.

I wasn't ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn't that I wasn't right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn't right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn't come easy for, someone like me.

In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.

You couldn't see the key around my neck: it hung too low under both collars. But if I leaned in close, I could make it out, buried deep beneath. Out of sight, hard to recognize, but still able to be found, even if I was the only one to ever look for it.

All I'd ever thought I wanted was to be left alone. Until I was.

Explain it to me. But I couldn't. I'd had to learn it my own way, and so had my mother. Jason would eventually, as well. No one could tell you: you just had to go through it on your own. If you were lucky, you came out on the other side and understood., If you didn't, you kept getting thrust back, retracing those steps, until you finally got it right.

As I stepped out to face myself in the mirror, reaching a hand to smooth away the steam, I saw myself differently. It was as if I had grown again as I slept, but this time just to fit my own size. As if my soul had expanded, filling out the gaps of the height that had burdened me all these months. Like a balloon filling slowly with air, becoming all smooth and buoyant, I felt like I finally fit within myself, edge to edge, every crevice filled.

I knew that in the last few minutes everything had changed. I'd tried to hold myself apart, showing only what I wanted, doling out bits and pieces of who I was. But that only works for so long. Eventually, even the smallest fragments can't help but make a whole.

As I spoke, I realized I'd held these words in for so long and so tightly that I felt the space they left empty once released. It was vast enough that I could think of nothing to follow them.

I tried to see it as bringing things full circle. I'd left and, in doing so, fractured myself. By returning, I'd be able to be whole again.

Pensé en todo lo que fue lavado una y otra vez. Hacemos este tipo de revoltijos en esta vida, tanto por accidente como a propósito. Pero limpiar la superficie realmente no hace que nada mejore. Solo enmascara lo que está por debajo. Es sólo cuando realmente cavas en lo profundo, que vas a lo subterráneo, que puedes ver quién eres realmente.

No one knew where I was, not a soul, and while I thought this was what I wanted, I realized, in the quiet of that room, that it was the scariest thing of all