Who Am I?

Today someone asked me who I am; he wanted me to describe myself so he could get to know me better, but I didn’t know what to say.

Who am I? Who is Hannah? How do I explain who I am to someone else in just a couple minutes? How can I distill and compress 22 years of life into a mere sound bite? Where do I begin? What parts are important and what do I leave out?

Maybe it was a rhetorical question but it really got me thinking: should I have something prepared and tucked away in the back of my mind for when I need to describe who I am to others?

But even deeper than that, am I truly who I describe myself to be? Does my perception of myself match who I am in reality? Maybe I think I’m better than I truly am in reality or maybe I underestimate myself.

Bottom line is, you can’t take what I say purely at face value. You have to get to know me to find out who I am. I can’t fully tell you who I am because inevitably there will be gaps in my narrative.

I will skim over a lot of things and boil my life down to a few main points: I will tell you about my family, my major, my class standing, my heritage, my immediate future plans, and a few of my best qualities. I will tell you that I love to laugh and have fun, I love people, and I love the Lord. The basics.

But I won’t tell you my bad habits, my weak points, my doubts, fears, or insecurities. I won’t tell you my struggles because I know when you ask who I am you want to hear the basics, the good stuff.

But as much as I wish I was just the good stuff, I know I am not.

I am also a girl with a temper, a girl whose words can hurt people, a girl with many fears, a girl who procrastinates too much, and a girl who may be too attached to food.

I’m the good and the not-so-good. That’s who I am. But you don’t learn all that from asking me the offhanded question “who is Hannah?” You learn that by spending time with me and over time the answer to that question will be revealed in a way more adequate than words alone.

So, who is Hannah? I’m not sure if I can properly answer that question, but stick around long enough and I guarantee you’ll figure it out.