I am tired of people looking at me and not seeing anything, as though I am a plain glass window they are just seemingly looking through. Like when walking past a shop and just taking mere glances at what lies behind but not enough to process what's there. Their vacant expressions make me laugh, and when they change to confusion, I laugh even harder. Because they are all the same. When I look at someone I see everything, the slightest change in their tone, the gestures they absentmindly make with their hands when they explain things, the flinches and twitches, the sighs and the clucking of their tongue. How they stand and the meaning in their silences.
There are people who don't look at me like I'm a person with feelings, like I don't breathe the same air or understand basic human decency. And so many times I find myself wanting to scream at them, but instead I stay silent, I smile, I let them think they know me. A lot of the time, I'm glad these people don't know the real me because maybe they just don't deserve to. Maybe they wouldn't know what to do with me once they knew the path I've taken to get where I am now. One that they can scarcely imagine, that I know how cruel people can be, the things I have seen, and the things I have conquered. I am who I am despite it all.
I feel pain, you punch me I bruise and I don't just bleed blood like everyone else but I bleed emotions too, they don't flow steadily not always, sometimes they need no nick to come to the surface and flow over my skin, there are no visible scars but they are there. Too harsh, too cruel, too rough with a soft soul like mine. I'm either too kind or ignorant, too laid back or overly observant, I see things that "aren't there," but if I miss something, "I'm not paying attention." I've got my head in the clouds and dreaming of the unlikely, or I've given up entirely and not reaching for the stars. I'm at a loss with what is expected of me and whether I'm meeting those expectations or just failing.
See, I don't waste my time on things I know aren't within reach, straining to touch what is essentially too valuable for the likes of me.
Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but when the world refuses to accommodate my desires and my needs, I melt into the shadows and build my own sanctuary.
With boarded windows and steel shutters and chains made of failures too strong to be revived, it is too late to start again.
Drapes weaved in fantasies with holes where dreams used to inhabit until reality burned them from the fabric of my life.
I won't dream of the perfect romance any longer, for if he was out there and wanted me, he would have come to me.
Showed me signs or reached out for my hand to pull me into his paradise and save me from my own torment.
I may never reach the top and become the greatest version of myself.
No one is coming to save me and become the happily ever after I've read in countless books.
I am the one who will save myself, be my own hero and saviour.
And when the time comes if it should ever, when I see him and he finally she's me he will know that all that is left in this world that I need is love.
This is all I have ever long to be, this is who I wake up with every morning and battle with.
Me.
