What am I? I learned the answer the way many of us do—served on a platter by the very society that questions my identity. They took my name and replaced it with roles. Daughter. Sister. Someone's future wife. The “Good” kid. They took my brain, with all its vast and unexplored capacity and forced it down to my achievements. They took my body and taught it to apologise for its desires. They took my choice and called it culture. Each time something was stripped away. Not just what I lost. But the possibility of what I could have had. The grief was mine. The shame was mine. Even the lack of resistance was mine.

One’s destiny is set the day they are born. They have given me the perfect blueprint to live by and even to die. They handed me crayons and asked me to colour inside the lines. But the white walls of my house call to me. They tempt me to run my crayons over them and let my soul spill.

But I didn't.

The world loves to negotiate. It says: give me a piece of you I can understand, a label, a story I can sell. For a long time, I was a fool. I traded fragments of my soul just to be seen to be seen for my skin and face. For a body that was never mine to choose. I was a fool to keep playing a losing game. And I judged anyone who dared to deviate. They wanted to know what you are. Boy or girl, this or that, normal or not. And I told them exactly what they wanted to hear. Because I wanted to be seen, I wanted to be loved. But it was not me. It was never me.

I have edited out pieces of myself. I have weighed people to see who I can tell all of me but trusted none enough to completely bare myself. I have shrunk down to fit boxes that were never made to accommodate me.

But I refuse to do so any longer. Because the moment I name myself for someone else, I lose the only thing that was ever truly mine—the right to change my mind tomorrow. The right to contradict myself. The right to be vast and contradictory and still whole. This me belongs to no one else. Not to the eyes that watch, not to the labels that pin me like a butterfly, not even to the mirror that tells me I am only what it reflects.

There is terror in that freedom. If nothing outside defines me, then what am I? A collection of memories? My desires? My thoughts or emotions? All of them are mine, yes. But is that all I am? Maybe. Maybe not. The freedom is in not knowing that, in the uncertainty.

There is also grief in that freedom. You mourn the applause you will never get for being palatable. You mourn the family that wanted a different child. You mourn the body you were taught to hate before you even knew what it was truly. But grief is also the first honest thing you ever feel. I think of all the versions of me that died so this one could live. I mourn them, then let them go. They are not mine to carry anymore.

I exist. I exist even if no one claps for me. I exist even if I am never seen. I exist even if the story I tell about myself is never known. It terrifies me to reclaim myself. Because to claim something as mine is to risk losing it. But it is not riskier than losing yourself to the definition of “perfect”. It is not riskier than shrinking your messy, complex and human soul to a simplicity they can comprehend.

Yes, there are days I still forget. Days when the want returns—to be chosen, to be understood, to be told I am enough. But I refrain. I tell myself the only person that should never forget me is myself. And if I go back to that desire to fit in, I will forget myself. Forget me not, I tell myself.

I place my hand over my heart and feel the biggest proof of my existence, my heart—beating. I am still here. This heartbeat is mine. This freedom is mine. This grief is mine. This fear, too, is mine. This ridiculous hope is mine. No one can ever take it away. Not unless I hand it over. And I am done handing it over. I light no candles and hear no witnesses. Except the one true witness to my soul: myself.