"Not Kayla."
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My freshman year, when I was asked to choose the nickname on the back of my jersey for the improv show, that was the title my friend suggested. From then on, it was the funny name I put on everything when my normal name wouldn't do. It was a perfect summary of my identity: being a twin meant we shared the same DNA and identical faces, but I was still "Not Kayla."
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​Though the words to describe it came freshman year, this has been my story for as long as I can remember. We have always existed as opposites: Kayla's hair is long and mine is short; Kayla is better at math and I excel at English; Kayla's clothes are bright blues and yellows and my closet is an array of neutral browns and reds.
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​Growing up in a family of six, everyone had their own interests and their own place — their own identity. My identity was in relation to theirs. At church, I was "Crissy's kid." To anyone in the city, I was "Sean Fleming's daughter." In almost every hobby or elective, I was "Audri and Alli's little sister." Everywhere I went, — everything I did — I was in someone else's shadow, like a kid left in hand-me-downs that were far too big.
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​I spent the first 13 years of my life trying to be myself by being something to other people.
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When someone told me I was good at something or that they didn’t know I had sisters, it left me beaming like the sun. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my family — I was just terrified of only being known for them. So I clung to every A+ I got and labeled myself “the smart one” any chance I could; when I couldn’t be that, I found an escape in stories.
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As it turns out, a life spent in books is a lonely one. I consumed story after story in almost every art form — books, poems, plays and music — but I didn’t have a story of my own. As I began high school, I still struggled to figure out who to be. I was “the smart one,” but that was only in comparison to others. By myself, I was just “Krista.”
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I realized, with startling urgency, that I didn’t know who that was.
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Always next to me, my twin sister shared the issue. We delegated quickly, made sure our AP and honors classes barely overlapped and handed each other electives we didn't want. There was at least one thing high school couldn't change: we share DNA, but not hobbies. We live life alongside each other; we do not live the same one.
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I've spent the last three years of my life trying to be myself by figuring out who that is.
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My freshman year, I enrolled in my school's introductory journalism course on a whim, thinking it could be something fun to fill the empty spot in my schedule. The class quickly became my favorite. I loved the stories I found through books, theater and music, and I’ve spent hours agonizing over every little detail of punctuation. Journalism combined both, and, pretty soon, my love for stories became a love for telling them.
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I didn't just fall in love with journalism, I found my identity in it. Soon, the latest story I was working on or spread I was designing became all I could think about. I spent Friday nights at football games and Saturday mornings editing. Sleepovers with my best friend became impromptu brainstorming sessions for what we would fix when it became our turn to lead. UIL journalism meets turned from extra practices to days I marked on the calendar. I edited stories with the passion to make every little thing right. When I got home, I sat with my mom and wrote articles, chatting about everything I had planned for my latest journalism adventure.
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That passion led me to becoming the entertainment editor a semester after joining, managing editor the next year and editor-in-chief of "The Hawk Eye" now. It didn't just give me a voice, it gave me a place where it didn't matter that I was "the smart one." I was Krista Fleming: a journalist for "The Hawk Eye."
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​My hope, after struggling to find an identity for so many years, is to help someone else find theirs. If they have a story, I want to share it. The stories I write have become something for a purpose greater than grades, awards or what I wanted to be — they've become an outlet to help others find a place where I struggled. The stories have my byline, but they belong to someone else.
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​For "The Next Destination," I sat with then-junior Izzy Frederick in a Starbucks, and she told me all she wanted to do with the story was tell someone else that it gets better. ​​​​​As baseball coach Corey Farra prepared for playoffs, with the team he called “family” rallying behind him, I shared why those games meant everything to him. By writing about the stakes of the baseball game on April 23, I shared the David and Goliath story the players lived through: an underdog team of all-new players and the first new baseball coach the school had seen in 20 years taking on the returning State Champions for the district title.
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These stories are the identities of those I get to write about; they’re what I get to share as I search for my own. It was through journalism that I found my identity — more than “the smart one,” “Not Kayla” or even “editor-in-chief,” but a reporter who wants to spend her life loving journalism.