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INTERSECTIONALITY | WRITING PROMPT
A Constant State of Flux
Monthly writing prompt for January 2025
We humans are in a constant state of flux.
In childhood, the changes are fast and furious. We go from blubbering blobs of neediness to whole people seemingly overnight, our personalities forming piece by piece while our families look on in wonder.
This continues into childhood, our interests, likes, and dislikes varying wildly from day to day, quick as the tide.
By the time we hit our teenage years, we start to develop a more permeable sense of self, defined by our similarities and differences with the people who surround us. As we straddle the line between childhood and adulthood, we wear our outward identity like a cloak, all the while forming our true identity beneath the layers of society, acceptance, and peer pressure. We are Clark Kent, perpetually looking for our telephone booth.
Stepping into adulthood, we believe our true selves to be fully formed. We shed those layers of insecurity in fits and starts as our uncertainty grows into confidence.
And then… we stagnate.
The changes still occur, but we operate under the weight of our own fixed assumptions of who we are and what we stand for.