the day I deleted “puzzle” from my bio

Hey lovely soul, 

I’ve been so excited to begin these conversations with you. This space is something I’ve wanted to create for a while now—a place where we can hold all the bigness of being human: messy, magical, contradictory... and feel just a little more seen in it all. 

I keep all kinds of lists—comedians to look out for, favourite film moments, restaurant rankings, and life-related scribbles like my collection of quotes that touched me deeply. 

Today, I want to share a line I heard while watching Love in the Big City —a translated series full of soft, deep existential moments. 

You know those moments when a quote leaps out at you, beyond the plot, outside the context, and feels like a message for you? A memory begging to be remembered. A truth that knows you. 

This was that for me: 

And I thought, oh! That’s it. That’s what it feels like. To be in this skin, this brain, this spirit. To love too deeply, laugh too loudly, feel too much, think too much, want too much. To be this particular configuration of matter, living and loving and crying and spiralling and getting back up again.  

To be me.  

To be you.  

To be us. 

This quote felt like an answer to something so many of us carry: the aching desire to fit in. 

Society has a way of trying to iron us out, make us smooth, palatable, and easily understood. And there’s nothing innately wrong with blending in, but there is something tragic about being wrung out to fit into someone else’s mould. 

For the better part of my teenage years and early adulthood, I called myself a puzzle. 

But one day it hit me: Pearl, you are nothing to solve. 

Puzzles are meant to be completed. Finished. You? You are fire and spirit and excitement and depth and contradiction. Others may struggle to place you, but why would you identify yourself by someone else’s inability to understand you? 

I immediately deleted the word “puzzle” from all my social media bios (yes, I had them up, hehe), and I wrote a poem. It was called free spirit, and it began: 

I belong everywhere and nowhere 

No wall can contain my mind 

No culture encompasses my thoughts... 

And it ended: 

My mind is an abyss, 

not in a chaotic way, 

But profoundly so. 

A universe 

perfectly designed 

Yet inconceivably vast. 

Maybe you get that. Maybe you’ve spent years trying to make peace with your quirks, your little oddities—your way of seeing, processing, feeling. Maybe you’ve been treated like something to fix. Maybe you've learned to tweak your voice, shrink your curiosity, hide your fire. And maybe—like me—you ended up feeling like a stranger in your own body. 

If so, please hear this: There is nothing wrong with you. 

We live in a world full of sameness, not because we are the same, but because so many of us are afraid to be seen. In a world full of copies, the most radical and revolutionary thing you can be is yourself. 

When I look at people who light up a room, who leave an imprint, who move something in others, I see a pattern: they show up as themselves. They arrive whole, unafraid of their aching and unpolished parts. And that’s what we are drawn to—their authenticity inspires connection; it dares the rest of us to live, too. 

And isn’t it oh so wild and wonderful that when we lean into that calling, when we start embracing our own strange and stunning self, we begin to notice others who see the world in the same colours we do? That’s not random. That’s resonance.  

Magnetic.  

Gravity. 

I’ve come to believe this: living in alignment with who you truly are—your pace, your rhythm, your truth—isn’t just some aesthetic choice or only an act of rebellion or activism.

It’s ease. It’s freedom. It’s energy conservation. It’s grounding.

When you’re not constantly editing or auditioning for the world, you free up your spirit to actually live. There’s less friction, less second-guessing, less strife, less pain—only the quiet hum of a heart no longer shattering itself. 

And yes, it is not lost on me that we live in a time where even “being your unique self” is curated, and we are still expected to contort ourselves, just into a different and often elitist kind of mould. One that may be more acceptably aesthetic, but still not you. 

So let me encourage you: honour yourself, even when it doesn’t trend. Even when it’s awkward, quiet, tender, or weird. And for those whose inner selves match the status quo, remain proud and keep living in your truth. 

Your whimsy, those seemingly weird things about you, are the little reminders that you’re alive, that you’re human, that you’re an individual with a story no one else can tell. 

At the end of the day, we are all here to be true. To taste the world. To share ourselves with the wind, to breathe as only we can breathe. To leave an imprint that could only come from our unique existence. That is our magic. My magic. Your magic. 

And isn’t it beautiful? 

Until next time, I hope you wear you proudly, wildly, lovingly, and kindly. Because if you’re not hurting anyone or denying their right to exist, you owe it to yourself to be who you are. 

As always, it’s been an absolute pleasure. 

Catch up in the next note, 

Pearl♡ 

P.S. I’d love to hear from you! 

What’s something “weird” about you that you’re learning to love? 

Just hit reply and tell me. I read every single one x