So everyone knows who I am…

This is who I am. This is me.

I am thoroughly and completely afraid. I feel too weak to keep wearing the masks. All the masks are fragile and tear-stained. None of the masks reveals who I am.

So this is me.

I’m frightened. I feel incapable of doing anything. I feel as if I am constantly walking near black holes, and I don’t realize I’ve walked near them until the next time I see daylight. And when I see the light, I realize I had been moving through darkness for a long time.

This is who I am.

I can’t sit in front of people and honestly say that sitting in that chair, in that room, in an uncomfortable suit, with two sheets of paper meant to encompass my entire life’s worth and contributions, waiting for a question that is answerable about my experiences, and hoping that my entire existence is passable for a job that will take all my time and yet barely cover all of my bills is where I expected to be in five years. I can’t say that was the path I envisioned that would lead me to the work of my dreams. And yet here I am.

This is me, and I am all I have left.

I don’t know who the Joneses are, and I don’t know what they have. I only wish that I didn’t pretend I knew when I completely ruined my credit chasing after specters of fulfillment. I wish I didn’t sit regretting every gift I sent people, every decadent meal I ate, every allowance I made so I could have safe transportation to and from school, and every time I capitulated to a completely arbitrary need. My space is full of absentminded “needs” that were rudimentary ethereal “wants” once upon a time. And now, when what I really need is quickly becoming elusive, simply “wanting” it instead is still not enough. I can’t swipe a card and get stability. I can’t write a check and feel healthy. I can’t eat my worries and call it survival.

This is me, and I am laid bare.

I am a writer, right? I like writing. I like words. I love reading. I have a sense of syntactical order. I can put together coherent sentences. I synthesize complex concepts while skimming cereal boxes. I try to fill my head with important topics. I want to be a woman of the world and not a woman of the dirt on which I’m crawling to ask for something. Everything. Food. A grant. A job, an extension, a scholarship, a lead, an invitation, something that makes me feel like these words built up inside me matter. I want to bring my words to the altar and feel as if they’re good enough for sacrifice. I wouldn’t lay a hand to my brother over them; but I would nurture resentment if I couldn’t make some living from the gift I’ve had since conception. First thought, first read, first recognition of the thousand words interconnected in a picture. I’m fearing the vacancy behind my stares. I wonder what happened to the natural inflection in my voice and when I started to resent the world that has borne me for nearly 24 years.

I’m learning slowly that age only works as a measure of years and not of perspective. Every setback sends me to an old time, reminds me of every skinned knee on the gravel-topped playground. I remember I would either stand up and keep running, or I’d see the blood welling up and start crying. The scrapes hurt the longer I stared at the pain. But I still looked for them, watched them sting and swell until they formed fading marks on my body.

Perhaps I’m a bad writer. This isn’t relatable. This is me, and this is how I talk myself out of staring at my own pain. This is who I am when I’m watching my reality sting and swell around me, except I worry I’ll suffocate as it starts to heal.

I’ve never wanted to be a woman. I resented a lot of my friends and peers who were in such a hurry to be adults, to be grown. Everyone wanted to get grown and I loved the moments of just being me. I didn’t change; time changed. I did things to accommodate time; but I felt unchanged and unsympathetic to this idea of running away from my girlhood. But now time and grownness are slapping me in the face. I now understand why so many of my friends find and create worlds of imagination in the slivers of time allowed them. They are grown, and I am lucky because they are waiting for me to join them. They are there to help me, and I love them fiercely.

I no longer feel proud of my wants because now I need to be grown. I need to join that clan of adulthood and responsibility or I’ll be eaten half-alive. But this anachronistic circumstance stares back at me in the mirror. When I am crying and I am scared, I look the same way I did when I was 3, 4, 5, 7, 11, 14, 18… My body grows to accommodate new worries and demands of time. But when I dream, I watch movies of other people’s lives, just like I did as a kid. Not my own. I don’t belong in there, not me. When I tried to place myself in a dream, I developed panic attacks that kept me from sleeping. I endured sleepless nights until I returned to the default of movies and dramas and costumes and firelight.

But now this is who I am. This is me. And I have to place myself firmly into a dream. And I am terrified. Me. Just… shaken with this realization that I can’t say when I grow up anymore because the world doesn’t have time to wait for me to grow. It doesn’t care about the growth of people like me. It just wants its time on its schedule and in its way.

I have to resolve to give it time on its schedule and in its way. Every exhalation feels like a quit. Not a release, just a quit. A rhythmic resignation to a demand to grow. Realizing that even though I was never meant to survive, the point is I did. I do. I survive.

Now I have to thrive. This is who I am.

This is me.