I Am Losing Myself

This piece was created on February 24, 2023. Simply put, I like drawing faces. I love the intricacies of the face. They make drawing faces fun. However, drawing yet another face is repetitive and boring, so I changed it a little bit.

On a deeper level, I drew this during Winter 2023.  It was my first winter here, and if you have read my piece “I Never Learned How to Swim,” you know that I did not adjust well to college. It was a long winter full of both highs and lows, constantly canceling each other out. I longed for the days in high school when I was happy. I felt like there was no path to happiness here, and I was losing my whimsical nature. Bits and pieces of me were chipping off, and at 19, I didn’t know what to do. I’ve gone through plenty of changes before, but without my own self, who I was supposed to turn to? I am the one constant in my own life, and no other hardships had ever rattled my world like the transition to college. I have been described by others as special, one of a kind, eccentric, and keeping people on their toes. I knew how to wield such a personality with the people back home, but my personality, I convinced myself, did not translate quite easily at UCLA. I suppressed my own personality. That is what this drawing is: a visual depiction of losing one’s own self and the panic enough to prevent any external signs.