“Once upon a time in a kingdom far far away, there lived a young girl…a young woman…no, a young girl whose hair was made of gold. And when the people who lived in her village saw her, they said, ‘Oh! How beautiful she is…’

…And one day she met a prince and he showed her a beautiful house in the kingdom Ludlow. And he said, ‘Come here and live here forever.’

So she left her mother and father and went to try and live in the beautiful house. And all the people in this new village loved her because she was so beautiful. And she was very, very happy…

And the young girl said, ‘Oh, Ludlow is a place where life is different…safe, clean, and pretty.’ But how do you get to stay there? Where do you find a taxi? Which subway do you take? And how do you know you’re there when you’re there?

But what she didn’t know was that the people in the village were very poor, and every night they crept into the house where the girl slept and they cut off a piece of her golden hair and sold it for money. ‘She’ll never even notice,’ they said. And soon all the gold was gone from her head…”

A snippet from a grown up fairytale, all to say that it’s so hard to function when everyone wants a piece of you. If you’re not sure of who you are in the world, it’s easy to fall to pieces when everyone is grabbing at you…

The truth is, some people know who they are. Some people don’t. And when you don’t know who you are that can make you a very interesting person, because you can be so many different things to so many different people. And that can be great for people, but not for you. To other people you’re so cool, so interesting, so unpredictable, so wildly fun. But to you, to yourself–when you don’t know who you are–it’s a fucking nightmare.

But how do you know who you are? I mean, you can’t see you, can you? Not at all. But you sort of know what’s not you, what you don’t want to be, what you hope you are not–like just some dumb girl from Long Island. Because in their dreams, nobody would settle for that. I know I won’t settle for it. So you keep trying different people–like trying on different clothes, different faces–until you figure out who you are really. Because I think that’s all anybody ever wants for you–to be yourself. To be your extraordinary self.