glass half full

I am so, so tired of being a nobody.

Ok, I am somebody. I am a curvy body and a brilliant mind and a deep heart. I have wide thoughts and can paint vivid pictures with my words, I feel the vibrations of people, pulses beat in my ears, new songs fall on my lips, I dream of guitars and tambourines and sometimes I have realizations -- what those in churches or religions might call "epiphanies." I can also hear the breathing of flowers, I can sing on key, and I think you and you and all are/is beautiful.

... but you wouldn't know it.

... because I am afraid.

I know I am meant to add a chapter to the big Book of all the men and women before me but I don't know where to start. I don't know, exactly, what to say. What. to. say. So many ideas, but where are the Ideas?

Fear of imperfection, long within my veins. Since I came out of the womb with black hair and wincing, skeptical blue eyes. The big birthmark on my milk-white skin that called out that I was different, that this was a unique and marked child. My quest, all my life, to cover it up. To do all right, but not great. To sing, but never into a microphone. To climb, but never to the top. To look, but never leap.

To live, but in peace -- do not disturb.

And while I know there is maturity in peace and thankfulness for the daily breathing and blessings -- the waking in the morning, the set schedule, the available food and roof, the decent sleep and the accepting love -- there is equal pain in denying what you can possibly be. A dissonance and an easiness. At night I am not tired. My resources are full and unused. I fall into my pillow instead of collapse.

But the words and phrases and ideas keep coming in. The stir to get them out gets stronger. I don't know what it will look like, in the end. I don't know it it will help anybody. I don't know if it'll stand on bookshelves for years or simply be stumbled upon by a few random Internet explorers.

I don't know, I never will. But I'd like to try anyway.