I Am, or I Am Not

I feel as if I am drifting at the mercy of things unseen. I have surrendered to it, knowing that I have no control on what is to unfold for me. I have no idea of a destination, or maybe I am just afraid of appointing a destination because I find myself always disappointed. I thought I knew myself but it seems as if the more I explore who I am the less I know. I feel though I am and have always been a contradiction. As if I am some mash-up of ideas that together have no business coexisting nor do they make sense and yet somehow I am all of these things anyway.

I do not know anymore at the core of myself if I am good or bad? Who decides the standards on these things and why did anyway get to make a standard for everyone else? I never could be what others felt I should be. I do not think I have ever existed in my skin without those around me trying to make me less of some things and more of others. I was never viewed as alright as I am. I was never considered proper as a child. Growing up in a family with old-fashioned values and beliefs. Where a woman was to be of service to her husband unquestioning and quiet.

They attempted to groom me for a life as a wife and to be a lady, but I was never going to be what was expected because that was never who I was. I had the mouth of a sailor by age 8 and I couldn’t have been less ladylike. I questioned everything and pushed back on obvious double standards. I swore my own oath to never make a man’s plate and hand it to him, seeing my grandmother’s unwavering servitude for my grandfather. I would matter of fact ask what was wrong with his own hands that he couldn’t ever pour a drink himself. I asked him once, it wasn’t well received. My dad started calling me by my great-grandmother’s name because she had a didn’t care attitude and a lot of sass. She was also considered mean though, in reality, she just had an opinion and shared it unapologetically.

The older I get the more people and life confuse me. The less I understand of my feelings and desires. The less I know of the reality I was force-fed growing up and the more isolated I feel. I do not think there has ever been a time in my life I have felt this alone and misunderstood. I do not see things as others see them making it increasingly harder to relate to a reality I am not sure officially exists. I know in truth my spirit is growing, and my soul is learning but growing pains are never easy. I have danced in the brightest of light and the darkest of nights sometimes skipping back and forth seamlessly between them on any given day. I am a hopeless romantic with a chronically broken heart questioning if love is even real. A daydreamer out of dreams, a dreamwalker finding my way in endless realms of alternate realities but lost in my own.