"Tell me about yourself"

WHO I AM is a 6 letter phrase that begins to try to encompass a person. It's really not enough, is it? How can I, with all my extremities and quirks, likes or dislikes or fence-sat opinions, changing all the time in response to experience, be encompassed in such a short phrase?

I -- it stands tall and straight and perfect, in line with a one dimensional utopia that does not exist in our real lives. How can I, with all my dreams, both practical and naive, and with all my failures pushing me along to the next hurdle, even begin to be described by such a flawless, clean line? I am not a straight contour, deliberately drawn and sure in its placement. I cannot be described by its articulate serifs, or its loud capitalization.

I am not I, and yet neither am I i.
Though it is quieter and broken, a more tentative spot placed carefully over a halted body, and though it is grammatically incorrect and falls short of everyone's expectation, i am more than this --

I am not perfect but I am not small.

It is difficult to describe who I am when asked to tell someone about myself, because it requires that I construct my very essence on a canvas of silence, empty and expecting.

No: I am not a construction built from the ground up; I am rather a whole pile of things, with things that do not suit me thrown away -- I am a sculpture at the center of a marble block, not some perfect statue that has fallen from the sky -- I am a collection of history that I did not decide, with memories that have stuck with me but also others that have washed away -- I am the negative space that has been cut out of a magazine, not the planned collage that someone has put together deliberately and thoughtfully.

I can spend all day telling you about people I am not, and things that do not apply to me, but I cannot say with definition what that implies about who I am. Understanding myself seems like something that is probably important to be able to do, but for me the suggested lines that are drawn against the things I decide not to include in my life are just as good a description as any.

Just like my messy desk, I can tell you of the possessions I do not own, but I do not necessarily know exactly what I have sitting on top of it either. Trying to describe oneself to someone is kind of like that, don't you think? You may remember the big things, but if it were only those on your desk that giant mountain might collapse without the things in between to support the structure. It's a combination of those big and small things that construct our personalities too.

-- is not necessarily easy to say; 

though a crooked "I" with a body that peeps awkwardly above its head sometimes is a better description than just 

"I" 

-- I know what I am not, so I guess that's a good place to start.