Mastering the Inner Mammoth: Breaking Free from Others' Opinions
On my first day of second grade, I walked into class and immediately noticed a new girl—someone I hadn't seen in the past two years. She was stunning. Her name was Alana, and within an hour, she became the center of my universe. At seven years old, love is an abstract feeling—an intense yet undefined longing with no clear course of action. You don’t know what you want from it; you just feel it. For me, that vague yearning suddenly became painfully real a few months later during recess. One of the girls in class had taken it upon herself to go around asking each boy, “Who do youuu want to marry?” When she got to me, the answer was obvious. “Alana,” I said without hesitation. Disaster. I was still new to the intricacies of social survival and hadn’t realized that the only acceptable answer was a casual, “No one.” The second the words left my mouth, the girl took off, spreading the news like wildfire: “Tim said he wants to marry Alana!” One by one, my classmates erupted into laughter,...