Good question. Who am I? Let's explore.

My name is Amara; I'm enduring my 16th year; I live in Oklahoma with two parents and four younger siblings. That's me in a nutshell... but I wonder. Is that really me?

I've told you a little of the real me already. I get quite a kick out of turning simple things - such as an introduction to myself - into deep discussions. I generally carry out these conversations in the privacy of my own mind, but sometimes a line or a phrase escapes my lips and I get a few weird looks.

But I won't burden you with all this. Let me try to explain myself without sounding to ridiculous.

Things I love are... well are many. I could generalize and say that I like music and movies and writing and books, delicious books. But that would be boring to read, wouldn't it? So let's start with music. I don't enjoy it in the normal way where one listens to the song, decides that the lyrics and tune are catchy, and decides to put it on one's iPod. I feel the music, lose myself in it. I often have one of those moods when I feel as if each limb of my body is being slowly, forcefully pulled in a different direction - do you ever have those? I don't know what does it...but if I sit down, slip my headphones on, and turn the volume all the way up, it's like everything just gets relaxed. Like taking a crumpled piece of paper and smoothing it out with your hands until it looks almost as good as before. So that's what I love about music.

What was the next thing? Oh yeah. Movies. I don't have such dramatic feelings about movies. Just a deep, deep interest. Watching a well-done movie is almost as good as reading a well-written book. (But not quite.) Don't you ever pull a blanket on and stick a DVD in the player - and half an hour find yourself forgetting that you're watching a movie? It's wonderful to watch a story play out, and become so wrapped up in these other people's lives that you actually cry when tragedies happen, and laugh at the funny parts, and feel your heart beat in the intense moments of love and heartbreak. It's like you get to live a whole life in the span of two hours. My dream is to have some part in the amazing process it takes to create the little two-hour lives.

Reading. Ahhhh. Don't you wish it was possible to breathe a book? It's basically like a movie, only so much more detailed, so intricate...you don't watch a character's story...you step into it. You become the character. You see things as they do, feel what they feel. "A picture is worth a thousand words." I never much agreed with that saying. A single paragraph of well-chosen words, written with meaning and heart, can tell ages more than the greatest masterpiece. Someone said, "To begin with, let us take the following motto...Literature is Love. Now we can continue." I'm not sure who Vladimir Nabokov is, but I think we might be good friends.

So I've told a little of myself. Like all really human humans, I'm contantly changing. I am not the same person I was one year ago...even six months ago. And a few more months, a few more seasons lived and waved goodbye to, and I will be yet another person. But these things are some things that will never, ever change about me. I can't tell you why, they just won't.