This was the year I realized not everything can be mentioned to everyone. By March the nonfeeling caught up with me and soaked into my skin; by June I was a new person, very adamant and even more dangerous than I’d ever imagined. So often do I slip into new suits that I hardly recognize the difference between them. I am not a professional, nor am I a sex kitten, nor am I an alcoholic but I let myself try the words on for size, extra small, stitched with histories and indentations on my shoulders from the worlds I have carried. 

There are so many opinions about who I am, what I do, what I want. If only I were able to explain my perspective the way I can in my head while I’m driving forty-five on county roads after midnight. How do people describe me? Motivated, responsible, waiting to self-destruct— I’ve heard that one. Easily persuaded but sometimes bitchy. Naive, selfish though well composed. I’ve written this a thousand times, only now do I sketch it out in left-justified text. I am socially awkward, introverted, and a liar in that I pretend to be excited when I don’t give a damn. When you look at the world as a plaything, what you once enjoyed becomes less attractive. Only when you realize you can have anything do you figure out quick there’s not much you really want. I am alone in this, I believe, but I’ll stumble around knowing I’ll run into the rest of my life as it comes.

This weekend I found myself in a hole-in-the-wall blues bar decorated in shades of pumpkin and smoke, colors that made the awful alternative cover band appear even more sinister. The world seems quietest while I’m thinking in loud environments, like the white noise of bar talk is playing off a cassette recording and I’m standing in a room with a mural of real life painted in costumes on the walls. Looking at all these people dancing themselves stupid, pouting their lips for cameras, bending over to reveal one more inch of soft pale skin, I am both humored and humbled, glad for the first time I don’t fit in well with others. I’ve allowed myself the luxuries of danger through taking up the position of observer; rarely will I speak of my own morale (I am still forming it) though I will venture miles and miles out of my way to play designated driver, trusted friend, and eager listener. Of course people take advantage of it. 

I can write a bomb essay and tighten a corset with the same hand. I have never been arrested, broken a bone or experienced a fury of emotion enough to make me put my fist through a mirror, but I’ve seen it all happen and thus know how to avoid it. I do not know anger, but I know apathy and that what is said to/of me now will not mean anything tomorrow. I do not believe in fate, walls or that timing is everything. I believe we can do what we want with what we earn and are given, but not with what we take through earning falsely. I believe in the power of a positive thought and everything else as background. This is what brings me here, still lost though more willing than ever to accept it.

Plenty of times I abandon missions of heart matters just one tiptoe in, preferring to stay in my apartment with my cat and month-old newsprint, painstakingly layering watercolor under iconic 60s images of Bob Dylan. The men with whom I spend my time want me because they can’t understand me; one told me once I seem something like a Rubik’s cube with an extra row of red, never quite fitting together the way one should hope I would. I took it in stride, disavowing the tulips and charm facade, and turned him into a story. The ones that mattered most stay alive in stories as well, speaking of cow towns in the Midwest and mountain views in northern California. I’ve never loved anything more, though even love seems relative to every other current in life. When you’re loneliest you love the hardest, yet I refuse to settle. It’s not that I have trouble finding suitors, I could have most of the town if I wanted. It’s about finding someone with creativity and passion enough to paint a red row white.

My aim in all of this is to help you better understand me, and if you’ve read this far, I believe you have already started. Maybe this will help you understand yourselves better, too, as we form the best opinions about ourselves in comparison to others. It stands for me as well and I encourage you to use me as a sounding board or at the very least, as a certain look of disapproval every time you are insincere. Now, tell me what you’re thinking.