The Menagerie of Me

I spent the first two weeks of freshman year carrying around this personality quiz I'd torn out of a magazine. The one where you answer 40 questions and it tells you your spirit animal. Mine said DOG. Loyal, friendly, eager to please. The definition felt like a straightjacket made of wet golden retriever fur.

Then I met Jasmine in AP Bio, and she decided I was a CAT. "You're all mysterious and quiet," she said, flipping her braids like she'd just decoded the secrets of the universe. "Cats are underrated. They're like, I'll vibe with you if I want to." I started wearing eyeliner. I started pretending I didn't care about stuff I definitely cared about. Being a cat felt cooler than being a dog, but it also felt like wearing someone else's vintage jacket—stylish but not exactly mine.

The whole thing unraveled at Jordan's house party last weekend. I'd been nursing a warm Diet Coke for an hour, doing my cat impression, when Jordan's older brother stumbled in from a protest with his face painted like a panda bear and said, "Who wants to help me make signs for the climate march tomorrow?"

My hand shot up before my brain could process what was happening. Jasmine looked at me like I'd grown a second head. "Since when do you protest?"

"Since now," I said, and I actually meant it. We spent until 3 AM making terrible puns about melting ice caps and corporate greed. I felt more myself than I had in months—maybe because I wasn't trying to be any animal at all.

"You're not really a dog OR a cat," Jasmine admitted on Monday, watching me eat lunch with actual enthusiasm for the first time since August. "You're more like... a person. Who knew?"

I threw away the spirit animal quiz. Some things don't fit in boxes, especially not the ones with pictures of animals on them.