‘How was school baby?’ My mum asked.
‘I hate my name,’ I confessed.
‘Emily is a beautiful name,’ my mum assured me.
‘But mum,’ I whined ‘There’s four other Emily’s in my grade.’
This is the conversation I’d had with my mum on the first day of high school. High school, the one place where everyone wants to stand out and be popular yet fit in at the same time. The place where how you act characterises you and you get to make people see you however you want as long as you go along with the rules.

At least that’s how its suppose to work. I however didn’t get this chance. My name told people what I was like. They took one look at me and sighed, another Emily, how original. I didn’t choose my name, how dare they simply judge me like that. I wanted to scream at them, but of course I didn’t. I simply smiled and went along with them and their stereotypical jokes.
At first it was just a mask. I was trying to fit the mould they expected of me. But over time I started to act more and more like them, like the other Emily’s. My individuality was the first thing to go, and then myself respect and self worth. My self esteem became so dependent on what people thought of me that one remark could make my day or send me into a state of depression.
It’s Yr 10 now. Big choices are coming up and I’m thinking that maybe I’m not doing this life thing right. Maybe just maybe I could do it better if I START JUST BEING ME, myself, not just an Emily. But how could I face the judgments of my peers then, when I’m no longer what they expect of me.
I watched the leaves fall slowly off the branches and land in patches of orange and brown. There was very little grass to be seen but a few green patches still managed to poke through. I wondered how easily it would be to be an autumn leaf. To fall and blow around in the early November air carefree. November, the first month of Autumn, the time when everything goes to sleep, when the leaves stop having to worry about a thing, they stop worrying about being green and making food for the tree and simply blow around in the air wherever they please in beautiful warm oranges and browns.
I’m a November baby so it’s always been my favourite month. Then it hit me. I suddenly knew what I would say to them when they asked me why I wasn’t acting like an Emily.
‘Because I’m not just any Emily,’ I would tell them ‘I’m Novembers Emily.’