There’s this quote by Harvey Fierstein popped in my head outta nowhere the other day: “Accept no one’s definition of your life. Define yourself.” It’s one of those lines that hits you in the ribs a little, like someone just tapped your sternum and went, “Hey, are you paying attention?” And honestly, I needed that nudge. I’ve been thinking so much about the ways people try—usually without even realizing it—to hand you a pre-written script for who you’re supposed to be.
I mean, I spent years believing other people’s ideas of who I was. A teacher once told me I was “too quiet to ever be a writer.” I remember blinking at her, clutching my folder of short stories like it was a tiny kitten I needed to protect. Quiet doesn’t mean silent. Quiet doesn’t mean I don’t have a voice. It just means I didn’t want to yell over the kid who treated every class like his personal comedy hour. But for a long stretch, her words stuck to me like gum on a shoe. It took me years to scrape off that nonsense.
And that’s sort of what Fierstein was getting at, I think. Everyone has opinions—family, friends, random people in line at Target who feel compelled to offer life advice because you’re holding a planner with stickers. Folks will confidently tell you what “someone like you” should do or be or want. I’ve had people decide I’m “too old” for video games, too whimsical to run a business, too introverted to teach Zumba. Meanwhile, I’m bouncing around a gym studio with a room full of sweaty strangers and having a blast. Every time someone says, “Really? You teach Zumba?” I feel like Fierstein himself is somewhere offstage going, “See? This is what I’m talking about.”
The weirdest things people try to define you by are the things they understand the least. Like the time someone told me I shouldn’t write paranormal mysteries because “the supernatural isn’t serious literature.” I remember sipping my coffee and thinking, “Buddy, ghosts have been haunting stories longer than your family tree has been sprouting cousins.” Funny how folks will declare what’s “worthy” like they’ve been handed a golden clipboard by the universe.
I’ve watched friends get boxed in, too. One of my closest pals was always called “the responsible one,” which is code for “the one we expect to clean up everyone else’s messes.” It took him ages to realize that he wasn’t obligated to carry the weight of everyone’s disorganized chaos. The day he finally said no to something, he texted me like he’d just discovered fire. Meanwhile, he’s traveling now, taking improv classes, hiking in places with actual cliffs—living a life way bigger than the label he got stuck with at sixteen.
Sometimes the definitions are subtle, like when people react with mild surprise that you enjoy something outside the little category they’ve filed you into. “Oh, you’re into French? I didn’t think you’d be a language person.” “You’re starting a tarot blog? Huh.” They don’t mean harm—most folks aren’t malicious—but the effect can still be this small, quiet pressure that nudges you back into the “expected” lane.
And then there are the definitions you hand yourself without realizing. Those are the sneaky ones. For years, I had this internal rule that I wasn’t “sporty” because I hated gym class in middle school. Turns out, I love dance workouts, long walks, and the occasional bike ride where I pretend I’m in a charming European indie movie. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that gym class was not, in fact, the universal measure of athleticism. Who knew?
Even silly examples count. I once decided I “wasn’t a hat person.” I don’t know where that came from—maybe some random snapshot of myself in a winter beanie that made me look like a startled turnip. But then, one day on a whim, I bought this wide-brimmed hat that gives me major “mysterious stranger in a 1930s speakeasy” energy, and suddenly I’m strutting around like I own the joint. Turns out I was a hat person the whole time; I was just wearing the wrong hats (and I now own two hat racks).
Defining yourself is messy and ongoing and occasionally weird. It means trying on identities like outfits and figuring out which ones fit and which ones scratch. It means ignoring the peanut gallery—even the well-meaning peanut gallery. It means letting yourself evolve, contradict yourself, surprise yourself. And honestly, that’s the fun of it.
So yeah. Fierstein wasn’t kidding. Don’t let people decide who you are just because they happened to show up early in your story. Write your own definition, scribble it out when it changes, doodle in the margins, add footnotes, cross out the parts that never belonged to you in the first place.
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