My mother made every trip to the fabric store an adventure. We would walk up and down each aisle, playing "I Spy" and commenting on everything: the ribbons, the cross-stitch patterns, the cake molds. We never needed any of these things, but if we made the trip an exciting outing, it would seem less mechanical and tiresome.

By the fifth grade, I wore headscarves daily. The materials we chose were often dark and subtle so that none stood out too much. My mother informed my teachers and school administrators about my condition because headscarves were not part of the school's dress code. But among the white polo shirts, navy pants and gray jumpers, my headscarves always stood out.

The hardest thing I've ever had to do was belief in myself.

With every step I've taken in life--every theater stage I stepped out on to perform, every location change I've ever made, even the graduation speech I stood up in front of my college to give--it's always been done with anxiety and fear. I would work myself up into a ball of stress and then eventually close my eyes and just run forward into the unknown, and pray to God I wouldn't just fall off a cliff. I've never in my life walked into anything with pure confidence, which makes me feel like such a fraud when I cheer others on to chase their dreams.

But when Nichole asked me what I felt I learned in the 24th year of my life, I think the answer would be: I learned to have faith in myself.

I learned to trust that I am more than a cog in someone else's machine, more than a pawn on someone else's chessboard. I learned I can own my narrative and my voice, all while being part of a team too, and I learned I could do all of that because I had the right people who made me embrace humility and then put their trust behind me to encourage me to do the work they knew I was capable of all along.

To be just 24 and to have been told most of her life she wasn't quite capable, that was huge.

Some late night near the end of 2011, Jenny and I had just left an ugly holiday sweater party and were walking the wrong way back to the apartment where we were staying. We didn’t realize it until I saw the alphabet going backwards, and even then we went two more blocks down the wrong path before deciding to turn around and call it a night.

But before we realized that and before we backtracked, we were walking and talking about something fairly inconsequential for 2 a.m. in the dead of winter. We passed a couple sitting on the steps in front of a row of houses. They were having an intense discussion, and I remember glancing down for a moment at the girl with her head in her hands, but we kept walking because it was cold and all we could think about was tea and warm blankets.

And then we heard shouting. We stopped and looked back and the guy was standing and punching down at the girl--screaming at her, hitting her--and people were walking right on by and trying not to look. I couldn’t not look.

She was screaming. He kept hitting her, and for a moment I saw a flash of a girl I recognized.

Next to me, Jenny snapped.

When you walk through the door of my parents' California home, you're immediately placed in an impeccable living room. The white couch is adorned with silk pillows, the piano is dusted and ready to be played, and my mother's glass cabinet of international collectibles is unmissable. It's a living room, by name, but I don't remember much of my life happening in that room.

The room was always a room for entertaining, a room for visitors. The real living room, as far as we were concerned, was through the dining room toward the back of the house: the "family room," we called it. There was a plush floral couch, a TV next to shelves of videos and books, a corner for our toys when we were young, and a desk that held our computer--before laptops ever entered our lives. It was a room where we did all of our living. It was a room just for us.

But in every TV show I watched growing up, there were never two rooms for living as a family. On the sets of every sitcom family's home, the front door opened up straight into what I knew asthe "family room." It was the main room where the sitcom family would sit down for "family meetings and where conflicts and resolutions would often take place.

I could never understand how a family could keep its problems so close to the surface. How was it so easy for the Tanner girls to open up to their father? How could Will Smith be so candid with Uncle Phil after his father walked out on him yet again?

Someone asked me last week to describe the best date I ever went on. I don't think I have an answer to that (there have been plenty of decent and pretty good dates/things-I-think-might-have-been-dates), but I don't know if there's really a "best" or "perfect" label I can slap on anything right now. But I can tell you my worst--or, at least, the oddest one:

I met B on a bus in Maryland. I was heading home after work and had forgotten my book at the office, so I had nothing to do but eavesdrop and, apparently, think of ways to complicate my existence. B was talking to the bus driver about when his stop would be coming up because he was still trying to figure out the lay of the city after moving from California, and because it had been two very long weeks since I moved was still friendless and bored, I decided to insert myself in their conversation.

"You're from California?" I asked. He looked over at me, which I took as a cue for some reason to literally get out of my seat and sit next to him. "I am too!"

We started talking and I learned he was in DC for an internship for the fall (he was a college senior) and was staying with his uncle just a mile from where I was living. Before I got off the bus, he asked for my number and I gave him my work email address instead (because that felt less complicated), and texted my best friend about how I finally made a friend (how kindergarten, I know).

The next day, B emailed me and asked if I wanted to hang out that weekend. I had told him I was still new to DC and he said he could show me around since he'd spent a summer interning before on the Hill. I said yes, we exchanged numbers, and met up on Saturday at the metro stop--where he instantly started rambling about the day he had planned out in hopes I would have fun because he wanted me to like him.

If there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I'm really bad at discerning signs. The first time one of my exes asked me out on a date, I had no idea it was actually a date until he kissed me at the end of the night and I said, "Wait, was this a date?"

Yes, I am both that oblivious and that awkward. If you want me to know it's a date, you should probably hire a skywriter.

I never had a "dream job," or one that I ever realistically pursued. When I was a kid and someone asked me what I thought I'd be doing when I grew up, my only answers were vague hopes: I wanted to be an archaeologist. I wanted to be an Olympic gold medalist. I wanted to live in a house made of cheese.