The Lies We Live

someone else

"I pin her on the wall like she go with the art."

You see others, not as they are, but as you'd like to see them. We are, after all, mere reflections of the insecurities and values that manifest in the most vulnerable part of beings.

You look at me as if I am somehow of lesser value than you. Because I'm not pious enough, because I listen to music, and swear when I'm upset. You see these things and find it ok to judge me. And I hate you for that.

Because I wasn't raised in the same sheltered environment that you were. A pristine suburban neighborhood, and a perfect family at home. Do you want to know what I got? An absence of good parenting. You had a confidant in your mother, I had void in mine. Your father was a strong support that helped you make critical choices. My father didn't love me enough to value my interests as a woman.

(You may be thinking that this is all very presumptuous of me, but it is still my firm belief that our upbringing, or lack of it, appears in our mannerisms. You realize that our faults are a response to what we have been deprived of. When you have your own problems, and catch yourself slipping, you learn to become more lenient when you see others do the same. She was so adamant of judging me for my flaws, it is hard for me to think that she can even begin to imagine what the lives of the less fortunate look like. Of course, I could be completely wrong and she is more f*cked up than I am, in that case, oh well)

It's all practice now. I can't make the world not hate me. It is their choice whether to be kind or not. But I can still choose to be tolerant of their choices, regardless of whether they favor me or not. 

It is a cruel world, one that tells us we are special, and then demands mediocrity from us. Asks us to change the world, yet expects us to follow what has been set out before us. They tell us we are free, as they tighten the shackles that contain us.

I am tired of walking the tightrope. Always just barely on edge, flailing mid-air when I least expect it. It is exhausting to live in a world that does not accommodate for you. It will not help you in your pursuit of dreams, nor will it mercy you when there is nothing left for you.

There a few days in winter that reminds you of the importance of staying alive. It is a setting sun that streaks the sky with jets of a soft orange, and fading pink. It's followed by a deep purple that encompasses all of sky and earth. I am still waiting for the happiness to consume me.

Or am I waiting to consume it?

I breathe in the frosty air and find myself imagining that I am anywhere but here. In times like this, I want to be anyone other than myself. I don't want to be who I am anymore. Crippled by my family and my sickness, being forced to hide my anguish, while the world expects to perform to the best of standards.

I want to be a CIA operative. I learn to look at the world in a way that very few look at it. With the keen interest, the close attention to detail that others never care for. I want to always be one step ahead of every threat. I want to fight something that I can see for once. And I want the air of mystery to consume me, such to an extent that even I don't recognize myself; I don't want to anymore.

I'm all too familiar with the awkwardly high pitch of my voice that makes me sound whiny, more so because I am, and I have the tendency to lose my cool, even when I know that I have to keep my sh*t together long enough for the storm to pass, and to figure out what my next play is.

I want to be a part of the mob, or a feared gang. I want to feel like the only resistance against a society of order and compliance because I am. I don't want to be ruled by a government that taxes me for breathing and expects me to compete with others for my survival. I don't want to comply a government whose law only allowed the terrible things in my life to happen, and never stopped them.

I want to be someone that's not afraid of breathing. Never wishing that the oxygen becomes arsenic, and we all die, gasping for life. We need something to put us out of all our misery.