I don't feel the need to justify the space I occupy.

"When adults say, "Teenagers think they are invincible" with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don't know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail." - John Green

Tuesday marks the 1 month point of my exchange. No big deal, right? Wrong. I've already been here for 1/6 of my exchange. Only five more months to go.
Somewhere in the past month, something big changed. I no longer care one bit what people think. I'm not embarrassed when I make mistakes. I do not judge. I do not care if you are black, white, asian, Muslim, Catholic, Hindu--I want to hear your story. People ask me if I'm losing opportunities for scholarships and classes for being in Portugal. At first, it made me uncomfortable and worried, but now I don't care. If this exchange costs me the chance to get into Berkeley, so be it. Because nothing could have been better for me than this. People ask me what I want to do when I go back to the United States. What university? What job? And people in the US have high expectations for me. I scored high on the ACT, SAT, and the PSAT. I have a 4.22 GPA. I can write a paper in an hour and get an A on it. But somehow, that doesn't matter to me anymore, because I am not afraid of failure and my grades and the opinions of other people don't make me who I am. Perhaps it is because I am a teenager and I think I'm invincible.
Or maybe it's because I have discovered that unless I define my own success, it is not success at all. This morning, I woke up and I thought, I'm sick of not talking. So I talked. In Portuguese. But I also listened. I listened to a Pakistani boy learn Portuguese. I listened to my classmates study for a test and argue over things in the book. I listened to the noise of the cars on the street, and the thoughts in my head. I listened to the rain tapping rhythms on the roof.
But I won't listen to people telling me what success is. Education is important. But there's more to education than school. I've learned more in a month here than I've learned in the past 2 1/2 years of high school. And maybe I don't want to work for money when I grow up. I want to love what I do. I want to help people, and learn, and continue to grow for the rest of my life. I want this understanding to last forever. I want to do what will make me happy, not what will earn me more money than I need. So maybe college, Peace Corps, then US or UN ambassador. That should do the trick.
Just one month of exchange has changed my life. I may be quiet, but I'm not afraid. And to all the people who said, "we're with you, no matter what happens," thank you. And to the people who feel like nobody's ever said that to them, I'm saying it now.