more about me

Hi, my name is Nina and I think introductions are really hard! I feel like I’ve lived 29 lives already, and I hope to live 50 more :) But I know there has to be some kind of introduction—something you can use to draw up a picture of me in your head. A literal picture would be just as hard, since I change hairstyles, jewelry, and clothing styles a lottt.

Because I don’t believe looks, jobs, or studies define a person, I have to find another way to make myself known.

People have called me an “old soul” before, but I don't like this phrase. In fact, I believe that no one who describes themselves as a certified Old Soul™ actually is one, haha :) I would call myself a child. I was not a jolly, loud child - I was sensitive, observant, critical, and often alone. This doesn’t mean I was fundamentally unhappy; I just lived inside my own head and in very tumultuous circumstances that made me hypervigilant of my environment and anxious for approval.

You can guess what kind of a teenager/adolescent I grew up to be.
Never really believing I’d make it past 18 (or 21, or 23), I find myself at 29 returning to this child. Retreating to silence, books, art - to observing, writing, studying, and constantly, yet often subconsciously, analyzing my surroundings.

I lived the life I lived, to learn about the kinds of pain, anger, hope, love, danger, betrayal, addiction, care, laughter, and insanity that exist in the world. I look at it this way to be able to move on. Also because I believe that (even though nothing really has a purpose) life gets so much better when you assign a deeper meaning to the things you experience. Everything gets lighter and infinitely more beautiful when you surrender to your lessons instead of your pain.
So I try to do that and it works 90% of the time :)

As a late-diagnosed autistic (I was 28), I think people are quite weird - often in a cute or funny way, sometimes in a really strange way. People have many habits and modes of communicating that I don't fully understand; not because I'm not grasping it cognitively, but because I don't see the point of it. I've noticed this always splits my social world in two. Some people really like my critical questions and use them as a mirror. I am not a sage (would never claim to be) and I don't see anything that is hidden for the rest of you. I do observe and name things from a different point of view sometimes and offer alternatives to things you might find self-evident. This also means some people don't really like me. They are happy with their set of rules and customized ways of moving through the world. They don't like my questions and analytical way of thinking because they were (or, felt) perfectly at peace without me. I honestly like it when people set clear boundaries because it teaches me a lot. We're all different after all. I believe there are many truths and many ways of looking at the world, many greys between the black and white, and that's the painful beauty of the social world :)

"This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers." - Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus