Discovering Myself

   As a senior in high school, I am constantly discovering who I am.  I am Mary Carnoali.  I am a writer of stories, a reader of books, and a watcher of movies.  I am a lover of comedy, a player of music, and a chaotic mess of tangled ideas and crazy dreams.  I am ambitious schemes and mad theories.  I am Mary Carnoali.  I am who I am.
   The most obvious place to start is at the base.  The foundation of my life has been my family, my faith, and my imagination.  Like the base of a mountain, these three have been there since the beginning.  In my attempt to reach the more obscure aspects of my life, they are my stepping stone--my push-off point.
   My family, though slightly dysfunctional in it's own way, is irreplaceable.  We are a typical family of four with a not so typical mixture of personalities.  My brother tells things the way they are.  He rarely embellishes situations or, when he does, it's so wildly extravagant that it's funny.  My father is the opposite.  In order to hold a conversation, one must learn to read in between the lines.  He always gets this look on his face and you sit there waiting during what would seem like perfectly normal conversation for the punch line.  As for my mother, she always gives me the impression that she was fairly normal before she met any of us.
   My faith has grown in it's importance in my life.  It has tumbled down from the mountain side to rest at the base and act has support and guidance.  I attend church, youth group and a Bible study whenever possible.  It seems as if the same words which went in one other and out the other only a couple of years ago are finally making sense.  This change in perspective plays a big part in who I am today.  I would be very amiss if I wrote a few phrases on who I am and not include it.
  The final stone of my base is the rough, vibrant stone of my imagination.  Whether it's reading books, watching movies, or coming up with my own plots inside my head, my inner world is always active.  I have created whole worlds and followed characters throughout their entire lives, coming up with strange new adventures for them to have and wonderful people for them to meet.  My brain is always asking "what if?" and, before I can stop it, it's off coming up with improbable scenarios.  Despite the fact that it can be exasperating, sometimes it's just what I need to escape or to move along in a plot I've been working on.  Like my family and my faith, I couldn't do without it.  It's a release, and, if used right, it's a crazy ride.
   Built upon my base there's a conglomeration of several things.  There's my obsessions and loves, as well as my disgusts and the things that I've chosen just not to care about at all.  I watch a ton of science fiction and love to get caught up in a web of complicated story plots.  My Sunday afternoons each August are filled with the new Doctor Who episodes and my Monday mornings are spent trying to figure them out.  If I like something, I love it, get completely obsessed with it, and immerse myself in it.  But if I dislike something, I hate it, coming up with a multitude of justifications, some not so high quality.  The thing that brings me the most joy in life is taking the things I'm obsessed with and teaching others to love it too.  Unfortunately for them, this usually happens to be my friends.  Some of them are harder to convert to my various Mary-isms than others.
   Like many kids around my age, I love music.  Differing from them, however, is the variety of music that I actually listen to.  On my mp3 alone I have songs in six different languages, including Elvish and English gibberish.  I like classical, christian contemporary, pop culture, classic rock, computer generated, Celtic, soundtrack, and instrumental music.  I like to sing and I play violin and flute.  I have dabbled in at least 12 different instruments throughout my life, resulting in a pile of sheet music, most of which I will never play again.
   These are only a few of the things that I am made up of.   The mountain reaches to the skies, covered in everything from giant boulders, to tiny insignificant pebbles.  One day I hope to understand who I am, conquering the rocks to claim my spot at the top.  In the meantime, I'll keep exploring, learning more with each step I take.