I Can Only Be What I Am

I can only be what I am, dear readers, just as this medium of cold unprinted matter can only be what it is. But this cold and unprinted medium is precisely a reflection of what I am not - cold, sterile, angry, bitter and full of hatred.

I am, no matter how unfortunate it may seem, quite the opposite of those adjectives so carelessly used to describe me. I am the person who will not let those she loves - friends, family, strangers, even enemies at times, want for anything. It is contrary to my very nature to see those I care for in any way hurting. Don't believe me? Ask how long I tried to be civil to my rapist. Almost four months.

I am a whole and loving person. I cannot help the way I was created. I am a person capable, and nigh, more than capable, of loving more than one person. I do not blame genetics, I do not blame upbringing. I do not claim something as intangible as my soul. But it is what it is. And I have found myself apologizing many many times lately for doing as I do - that is to say, loving.

I cannot change the fact that I love any more than I can change WHO I love. I cannot change these feelings, for better or ill, regardless of how I try. I have tried to smother them, dampen them, transmutate them into rage, hatred or a seethingly blind fury. And still in the end it is what it is.

To lay out my ideal life is to claim the stuff of fantasy, of legend. A life so implausible that it would never survive in this world. I want, plain and simple, those who love me to be in my life. No more and no less than one another. I would like to be able to give myself freely in every capacity to those I love in every way, shape and form. To create a family with those, to create a life, a home, an entire lifetime with those I love. Most of all, I wish not to have to apologize for it. Because if there is one trait I can stand to lose, it's the overwhelming apologetic nature that I have.

And I am done apologizing for what I feel and how I feel it and whom I feel it for. To be forged from the same fire as I am is to be unabashedly and thoroughly unashamed of what and who I am. To be who I am is not to claim indifference or indignity at the hands of others. Everything I touch, I change. Imagine a pond, calm and serene. Throw a rock into that pond, and there will, for a time, be ripples upon the surface. When the rock has settled to the bottom of that pond, the pond may appear the same as it always has once the ripples have subsided. But it is forever changed. I am that rock. The world is my pond. And every ripple I make eventually subsides, but things are never the same.

You may look at me and see nothing worth looking at - a sorry little lump of a girl who can, at times, barely speak above a whisper. Who can, at times, barely seek to look beyond the passions of her heart. You may see someone who may look thoroughly unable to achieve the things I have already achieved, to feel what I already feel. But to do so would be to sorely underestimate me.

I have my dignity, which I have all but sacrificed. I have my strength, that which is mine and mine alone and that which was passed onto me through those who have come before me. And it has all but diminished. I have my love, and those I love, no matter how tenuous it may seem at times. I have my heart, which is ever capable of mending and changing itself to accept the circumstances, regardless of what is thrown upon it. I have an all consuming, raging desire to make a difference, make people understand, make ONE person understand. To change. To help. To hope. And those things are so intrinsic to my nature that no matter how hard others try, or no matter how hard *I* try, they cannot be stripped from the very essence of what makes me, ME.

I will not apologize any longer, friend, for feeling how I do to you. I will not apologize when I say that at one time, I felt I loved you. I felt I could be the one to work out the pain, the sorrow and the anguish you feel. I will not apologize that I was disappointed when you said that I could not be all that you needed me to be. I do not regret that I still wish you could understand that I could easily fill that void, meet those goals, hopes and dreams and give you all that you wish to have in this world. But I, for one, am done apologizing for it. Because it is who I am, and it is what it is.

And I am no longer ashamed or afraid of the gods and idols that I have made. So leave the words, leave the worlds, let it all hang out and let go. I'm done with facades. I'm done trying not to care. The cards are all laid out on the table, and I'm going to play the hand I'm dealt until i can no longer hold those cards. Because, in a nutshell, that's life.