everyone has their heroes. most people (me included) would say that their mom, dad, brother, grandparent, or any other member of their family would be their hero. some people might say poets or actors or artists or directors. and maybe, on occasion, they could say the person they are 10 years from now is their hero. the person they want to be. the best version of themselves. that’s their hero.

aside from my family (which is entirely composed of heroes), i have one other person who is my hero. and no, it’s not neil gaiman or sylvia plath or julia ducournau or tim burton.

it’s 15 year old me.

a lot of people don’t really like the people they were in high school and i don’t blame them. high school is (one of) the most awkward phase of our lives: it’s like middle school but with more pressures and horomones and homework. you have this overwhelming desire to “fit in.” to impress people you don’t even care about. it’s rare to know who the hell you are.

but, weirdly enough, and at 15, i did.

i wasn’t the coolest person in high school, and that’s me being kind to myself about it. i wore kneesocks and bright orange eyeshadow as i walked down the halls (i modeled my style off of shows like gossip girl and the indie subcultures of tumblr, it was a mess). if you took a listen inside of my giant, yellow, over the ear headphones, you’d hear the blare of bands like the stokes, arctic monkeys, radiohead, passion pit, grouplove, and bon iver.

i spent most of my free time reading coming of age novels and attempting to write one of my own. i watched movies like girl, interrupted and obscure european horror films and told myself, someday, i would write things too.

i was outspoken about politics and feminist theory. some would say i was abrasive, or a bitch, and i would agree. i was driven, determined, and–frankly–did not give a single f*ck.

in short, i was a total wannbe hipster. i was insufferable. but, i was me.

when college came around, i was determined to reinvent myself. i was completely myself in high school, but that didn’t really make me the coolest or most popular kid in the class. but college? college is where weird kids blossom. where weird kids become cool. where girls like me go to transform, so the meatheads from my high school could look at my instagram posts and say “damn, julianna mitchell got really hot.” it was where i could shed the high school cocoon of myself to reveal this super hot and fun butterfly that would have been popular in high school if given the chance.

so, when i went to college, i made it a mission to become somebody else. and boy, did i become someone else.

i’ll spare the details of the early parts of college but, in short, i didn’t transform into a butterfly. i was a moth. people admire butterflies; they let them rest on their fingers and draw doodles of them in gardens and wear them on clothing as a symbol of something beautiful.

moths aren’t butterflies. the standard moth is off-putting and, by bug beauty standards, unattractive. we chase them out of our homes with brooms and smack them with rolled up magazines. if you put a moth and a beautiful butterfly side-by-side, chances are that you’d think the butterfly is much prettier than its fraternal twin.

all of this is to say that i’m scared of moths. so instead of becoming this beautiful thing i always wanted to be, i became something i absolutely feared.

i was a sell-out.

15 year old me was cool. 15 year old me was 10,000% unapologetic. she knew who she was and she didn’t care if people thought she was weird or basic or bandwagoning or any other thing in the book. she would proudly wear whatever she wanted, post whatever she wanted on social media, and would do whatever she wanted. 15 year old me would think that college me was inauthentic. a sell-out.

15 year old me would not think that i was cool. she would not be proud of me. and that sucked to realize.

senior year of college has been really transformative for me. i started living on my own, so not only am i constantly keeping myself accountable, i’m constantly keeping myself company. and just like when you start hanging out with an old friend who you haven’t seen in a while, i started to rediscover all of the things about myself that i had forgotten about. the things i liked. the things i was all along.

i want to be someone i am proud of. but even more than that, i want to be someone that 15 year old julianna would be proud of. that older person she’d look at and think, “wow, she’s really cool” regardless of what anyone else thought of her.

because i’d rather be a moth to everyone else in the world, than to not be a butterfly to me and only me.

so yesterday, i went to a salon and dyed my hair dark and got cool, choppy layers and bangs because it’s something i wanted to do for me: not a way to reinvent myself after high school, or a way to change who i am, but because i wanted to. and because 15 year old julianna would think i look pretty cool (especially because her attempts at looking cool and edgy were pretty bad).

i’m scared of someone reading this. i’m scared to promote it on social media and i’m scared of what people will say about the way i write and the way i think. but the thing is, 15 year old julianna wouldn’t let anyone hear the end of it, so i won’t either.

finding yourself is a nonlinear journey, i’m the first person to tell you that. there’s ups, there’s downs, and i guess there are even times where you circle back to the parts of yourself that feel the most like home. and who knows! maybe in two weeks, i’ll decide to dye my hair blonde and begin a whole new phase of my life, and this whole post will be just a big load of hooplah!

but for now, spending time with 15 year old me is pretty rad. and i think i’ll hang out with her for just a little bit longer.