uniqueness defined

(sidenote: this was the first and only post on the blog I tried to create to replace this one. that experiment failed. but my thoughts didn't. So, here ya go. :D)

One thing that I've kept hidden for a long time is my deep desire to feel unique. To be genuine. To stand out. But as I've progressed through my high school years, I've slowly come to realize that my life is too perfect for any of that. Because when compared to the girls behind some of the blogs I read, I am a stereotype; not "unique." A crafted, typical, Happy Valley Utah Girl from The Bubble. I have the perfect family, the perfect friends, the perfect grades, the perfect life. What voice could the girl-who-has-her-act-together possibly lend to an already overstuffed blogosphere? I ask myself this, but even as I do, I think of the question, "well, who's to say you're not already something unique? Since when is being "unique" something defined?"

I've always wondered this. Everyone is unique by divine design, and yet our society stresses being genuine and authentic in a sense that they fit some unwritten description of  a "unique" individual. Witty, sarcastic people who are just trying to get through their lives in one piece are "unique." The deep thinker who wants to be a writer one day is "unique." The girl who's moved seven times and is trying to find a place in the world is "unique." Why, when the definition of the word "unique" suggests something uncharacterized, something individually divine? To be unique is to be human. But for those who insist on being distinctly individual, is "unique" really "unique"? Or is it just another stereotype? 

Before I sat down and thought it through, I thought I wanted to be the kind of "unique" all the other bloggers were. I wanted to be the girl who was free-spirited, silently suffering yet optimistic in daily endavors. I thought that was what being "unique" meant, because that is the stereotype. However, just recently I realized that none of that is true for me. Though I tried to create a new blog and a new slate and a new start, I simply can't let go of the person I know I am. I cannot try to be anything different because I am only the person I was cut out to be. So rather than mimicing the blogs I enjoy reading, rather than developing a new self image that inevitably crumbles for lack of foundation, I've decided that I want to be the kind of genuine that doesn't have an expectation. I want to be the kind of authentic that doesn't require anything more of me than I already am. I want to be the kind of unique that I've always been. :)