To the editor:

Does the following resonate with you? It’s what one North Country young person wrote about her struggle.

“All my life I tried to fit into a box, one that never really fit me, one that was simply too tight and uncomfortable … I was trying so hard to put a label on myself, because everyone was asking me to … With the pressure, I tried to go from one box to another, one that felt slightly better but still didn’t fit.

“Life is too complicated and complex to try and fit everyone into a perfectly pretty box adorned with a bow. No, life is messy, something that cannot be contained, so neither should we.

“We are all humans just trying to figure out how to live our lives … No one has the right to look at an individual and tell them how to be their authentic selves, how to live their authentic lives.

“In order to really make progress, we need to stop seeing the world as something to ‘label,’ something to shove in a itty bitty box. It’s time to move on. If we threw out this idea of what our world is ‘supposed’ to look like, everyone could just live a little better. … let people just be …”

Even though I am an older woman in a very different situation, I thank this young woman for her words.

Stephanie Gubelin

Lake Placid

(This letter is the last in a series sharing thoughts of North Country young people. Quotes come from essays submitted to the contest “My Dreams for My Community,” sponsored by the Community Engagement Project of Adirondack Voters for Change and the Adirondack Center for Writing.)