We think we know exactly who we are. But let’s face it, can anyone really know themselves completely? Everyone is a puzzle without a picture on the box. People discover new things about themselves every day of their life, be it small quirks, like how they always chew their food on one side of their mouth, or something large scale. Every realization is caused by one catalyst or more. And each catalyst is a hidden puzzle piece of everyone’s true self.

There are always going to be factors that get in our way, like the subconscious, or even questions that we cannot fully answer about ourselves. These factors prevent us from seeing every part of our “soul” that truly exists. Events are going to happen that make us question who we are; “If someone broke into my house… what would I do…?” At one point in our lives we think of different scenarios- break ins, accidents, deaths-, but we won’t know for certain what we will do until the scenario happens to us. Or when an event actually happens to us and we look back at our actions and think, “why the heck did I do that?”

In eighth grade, I was very depressed. No matter what anyone said, it didn’t change my mood. I started to go to counseling because my family was worried, and after a year of it, my counselor diagnosed me with anxiety. My anxiety was so bad that I didn’t know how to help myself because it was leading to other things. Did you know that anxiety and OCD are directly linked? Did you know that germaphobia is a form of OCD? I found this out the hard way when I didn’t know what was going on with myself. The more I discovered about my anxiety and how to help it, the more I discovered about myself than I knew. It was just like putting a puzzle together without knowing what the picture was supposed to be. Even today, four years later, I still come to realizations about myself when I think about my anxiety and who I am or why I do the things I do, like I discover a new piece that can fit into place.

Just because you don’t know your true self doesn’t mean you have something major going on, like anxiety. Anyone who doesn’t pay attention to themselves will have little discoveries once in a while. Anyone who thinks they know themselves is either very confident in themselves, or does not pay attention to the little things in life that happen every day.

No matter who you are, you are a puzzle missing a piece. A person is not merely a hundred piece puzzle, nor are they a thousand piece, they are an endless puzzle that when being put together, one missing piece could be thousands more.