I wish I could tell you I write best at some colossal, oaken desk with a Tiffany lamp tossing multicolored shadows on charmingly worn paper. That was novelist-wannabe Taylor’s mental portrait of a “real” writer, anyway.

Writing owned a certain glamour then. It was something fancy, something many would aspire for but few would realize. I grew up throwing that little word in front of “writer” — “aspiring,” that is. Without the looming desk and the dim study, without the crinkled paper, I couldn’t be a “writer.”

When I reached college, though, writing became not some distant goal but a conscious act of survival.

And survival sure as hell isn’t always pretty. It means sitting on the floor with a fourth mug of Earl Grey at my side. It means mumbling, “Michel Foucault, I hate you. But I kind of love you, too. Damn it.” It means composing a cliché rant following some “end of the world” (but not really) heartbreak — and having the good sense to revisit it with my red pen and briefly abandoned logical self.

As I slowly traded my idealized portrait of the “writer” for my own messier reality, I let go of that little word altogether. I am not an “aspiring” writer.

I am a writer; I always have been. And I don’t need a gargantuan desk or a best-selling novel to tell me who or what I am. Writing is my source of income, yes, but above all it’s a source of survival and a state of being.

“Be yourself.” The emblem of a Millennial pick-me-up. I remember tanking the shoe kick (a real event, I swear) at fourth grade Track and Field Day. As a token of my failed sneaker fling, I received the, “Be yourself!” ribbon. Those two little, well-meaning words remain etched in my mind, a permanent fixture of growing up in the ‘90s — yet I sometimes abandon them, replacing “me” with a fictional portrait of what others want.

I’ve learned a lot since graduating from college in December. For example, baking cake for dinner is one of those things that sounds like a good idea until you nearly set the oven on fire, try the finished product, realize it’s too sweet and reach for that sensible granola bar in your time of regret.

I’m also better at detecting when I’m not being myself. Typically when I’m trying to impress someone.

I often reflect on how I represent myself in person versus on the Internet. On Twitter, I proudly proclaim my myriad interests, posting photos of the latest page in my Arabic notebook, that glowing (and frightening) picture of blonde Roger Federer, news on the rapidly deteriorating status of free speech in Turkey.

Yet when meeting someone in person, I find myself hiding all of the above, deeming my interests “too out there” for public consumption.

“Be yourself,” it seems, is as difficult at 22 as it was in elementary school, something no number of shiny ribbons or inspirational posters can truly instill in you. In a conscious effort to be more “real,” more like myself, I’ve made tangible lifestyle changes.

I no longer straighten my hair, its naturally chaotic state a daily reminder that it’s OK to be my naturally chaotic self.

I give myself permission to write terrible first drafts, make that cringe-worthy tennis pun and get a little overzealous with the em dash. Though none of the above will wind up in the final piece (probably for the better), there’s something raw and beautiful about capturing the self, unedited, suspended in a specific moment and frame of being — one that will never again manifest in exactly the same way.

“29 Llamas That Just Can’t Even.” “42 Ways Istanbul Is So Beautiful It Actually Hurts.” I’m a sucker for “life-changing” cat pictures, “You won’t believe it!” headlines and some Kardashian’s week on Instagram.

But I’ve stopped clicking those “23 Things Every Girl Should Have/See/Experience By [Insert Arbitrary Age].” Milestones aren’t contingent on Facebook life events or existing a certain number of years on Earth; I determine my own milestones on my own timeline.

“Being yourself,” I’ve realized, is a lifelong journey, one in which I’m bound to simultaneously make progress and make mistakes. One where derpy llamas, beautiful Turkish mosques, the fourth-grade shoe kick and blonde Roger Federer (may his bleached presence never again grace this Earth) can coexist.

You are enough.

Teenage Taylor probably made that her cellphone banner (remember how critical it was that your cellphone banner captured the complexity of your existence?). It sounds like something you might find on Pinterest in black, bold text on an over-filtered photo of some natural wonder.

Yet I tell myself, “You are enough,” every day, and sometimes I admit I don’t believe it. For a long time, I avoided the realm of cliché, Instagram bio-worthy quotes. I have a degree in English; I should be meandering secondhand bookstores plotting my rise as the next great literary theorist, not thumbing through pages of, “When it rains, look for rainbows. When it’s dark, look for stars.”

But when something recently collapsed without warning, without a “why,” I found myself back in the syrupy sweet underworld of motivational one-liners, my tea mug and melodramatic mood in tow. Even when I reunited with my sensible side, I found comfort in generic quotes.

I’ve long publicly sneered at them; I’m too sophisticated, too cultured for that trite rubbish, after all.

Yet here I am, scrolling through the list of them in my phone, searching for brief confirmation that I’m not failing my whole family for whatever inadequacy nagging me today — that I’m still single, that my interior design concept is a wall of crooked tennis posters, that Facebook is cluttered with engagement ‘life events,’ and I’m over here like, “I tried to put Up-Down tokens in the coin laundry the other day.”

When I read those three little words, “You are enough,” I’m at peace. I rediscover the power of perspective. I realize there’s no timeline, that Roger Federer is a badass decorating motif and I have a valid excuse to play Centipede in the near future.

And that’s enough for me.