I am the sum of all my parts. Genetics. Aesthetics. Heretics. Some days it’s glaringly obvious who I am and I’m happy. Other days I count the close friends on less than one hand and I begin to question my own worth. “You’re not a good person” “You’re too opinionated” “Lose some weight” – you know, the usual.
I struggle to sit on fences. I’ve learned to judge less. Evolve. But it’s bloody uncomfortable with a paling up your backside and I don’t want to sit next to apathy.
I am fiercely loyal. I don’t suffer fools. Narrow-mindedness upsets me. I like red boiled lollies. I love laughing. I deflect things with humour. Sometimes I’m funny, sometimes I’m not. Sometimes people tell me I’m funny and I’m not sure if they mean “funny ha ha” or “funny strange”. There are insecurities that rattle inside my brain I have named Joe Pesce – “I’m a little fucked up maybe, but I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I’m here to fuckin’ amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny?” It’s not very funny.
I’m fairly open but I wasn’t always. My husband was the first and last person to break my heart. He opened a thousand doors that were closed. My children smashed every last one. I cry over miniscule things and I have them to blame. Or thank. I’m flawed but aren’t most of us? If you never slipped up, fell down, messed up then I think you might be lying.
“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
Salman Rushdie Midnight’s Children
Linking up for Eden’s Fresh Horses where she’s asking “Who are you?”
