Who Am I

You have no idea how hard it is to be what you already are. To receive compliments and admiration you can’t accept. When I look back at what I’ve made it through, how far I’ve come, the strength and courage it must have taken. Yet I stand on buckling knees, hide tears I pretend to never cry and coward behind past mistakes I fear I may repeat. I am no ones hero. I shove bloody feet, scorn from running away and never towards into hundred dollar sneakers I wanted but did not need. My judgement at best can be compared to nothing and no one aside from luck. I look the part and yet I don’t. I am reminded of this daily. And for some reason everyone knows me which is odd because I don’t know myself. I don’t heal from old wounds because new wounds layer atop them and mold to the exposed, unhealed flesh below. I forget some of these scars even exist until I am tripped by the right line at the wrong time by the right person in the wrong place. I don’t consider myself broken but I am bent in so many angles that up and down are simply semantics with changing meanings I apply given my mood. I am exuberant and errant and full of only what I can carry from moment to moment. Surrounded by pernicious people and things that I welcome warmly with open arms. Their ambiguous intent keeping me alive and angry and sharp and bitter. And I am all the things you say I am. I don’t know how or why but I am good and smart and creative and inspiring. I see my successes and its impact. All I have to do is accept that which I already am. But seeing and believing and feeling are antonyms that never merge in the same spot at the same time. So I am sanely split. Surviving only because I successfully and convincingly dissociate from time I’m not prepared to exist in. Never being anything but who I am. I hesitantly accept the many shades of me. But remain absent of a grasp on what that means.