I am a multipotentialite, and I can guarantee that most of you have already stopped to look up the term. It’s not a disease, I swear. In a nutshell, I’m a person that does not have one true calling. Instead, I thrive off bringing disparate ideas together in creative ways, making me more complex than the average teenage girl.

I never gave myself the time to think about me. When I finally decided to “find myself” I  did so at the worst year of my life: Junior Year. I was already stressing over college essays, standardized testing and— you know—high school, until  I decided to use my limited time detoxing, glancing away from the looking glass that every basic “trendsetter” peeked through.  Some may call me mentally strange, but that hiatus I went on was well overdue.  I had been more concerned about other people's expectations of what I will be with my limited life, than I was about my own- and that was toxic.

It’s not hard to cut bonds with ideas that aren’t even yours, but it’s hard if they’re the ideas of two parents who had to settle with what, to them, seemed practical and safe. A nurse and a construction worker are significant jobs that, like most jobs, are needed in order for the world to go round. At the same time, they are jobs that neither of them actually wanted to do. My father wanted to serve his country, but with an early childhood injury to his back and chronic asthma, that dream expired when he, a juvenile, became a father to my eldest brother. My mother dreamt of owning her own beauty parlor in her home country of Jamaica, but this dream ended after she took over the role of breadwinner from her sick father at age 15.

I decided to give my parents “the talk” about what my future holds, and you can imagine Christmas when I didn’t follow the generic questionnaire answers of lawyer, doctor, teacher, or any other practical career paths that parents love to hear about. After blank stares and constant reminders of what each had to sacrifice in order to be where they are at now, they decided to let me ruin my life in peace. That’s all that I ever wanted.

I’m not afraid to explore. Throughout my 17 years on Earth, I’ve done a variety of things to make me feel like I achieved a fulfilled life. I’m a member of my high school's Gay Straight Alliance Club, where we find ways to inform teenagers about an underrepresented group of people struggling to receive an equal amount of rights. I’m also a member of my local chapter of DECA, where I solve series of real world business scenarios using the financing and marketing skills that I’ve learned in the matter of one class period. You can see that the things that I’m apart of have no correlation what so ever, but to me they make perfect sense. When I was finally able to look within myself, I began to appreciate the variety of my interests. Each interest adds a layer to the abnormal, cunning, and observant, Tamika.

I don’t know what I am going to be when I get older and that’s a good thing. I rather stress over having an unorganized lifestyle then a sedentary one. Living day to day, on an explorer's appetite is more appealing than one of an average Alyssa that shops at Whole Foods. People want to take the road less traveled only to find that same road is stuck in traffic, meanwhile I’ll be kayaking on a riverbank in order to continue searching for a destination.