You are something.
You move mountains with your courage and the generosity that lies at the core of all you do. Your timid ways are not factions, to be moulded or manipulated by others, but are powerful torrents that move people together and help those that are in distress. In short, you are nothing shy of perfection.
In those days when you were kicked or berated with a wooden stick, your tears were enough to lay a current, that would transport you to where you stand today. It isn’t on the backs ofothers that you made your way through, but rather by an innate understanding that the world isn’t always fair, and that people, being subject to the flaws of human nature, would pick out your weaknesses, and use them as knives to brandish and cut you down to their size.
However, your creativity acted as a barrier between you and that most extreme of human grievances; anger. It wasn’t that you didn’t feel it, as you well know it lay within you, but instead, you wrote it down and channelled it into some form of art. It was in art that emotion became your muse, dancing with you late into the night and offering a supportive arm when the world seemed distant and obsolete.
You learned that misuse of power, is not an act of love, but rather a stone used to beat those that are different into submission. You were a pacifist by nature but born into an environment that was anything but peaceful. Often you found that the draught that made its way through your house, could cause the sticks that held the helm of the home together to break at any point. So, you dared not breathe, in case your own breath would cause the world around you to crumble into ruins.
You were called smart in school, but never quite understood what that meant. Was intelligence something to be measured by exams and grading? Or was there an earnestness that you brought to your public persona, that made you stand out and shine brighter than your classmates? You never asked your teacher how smartness was quantified, but you felt instinctually, that she probably didn’t even know herself.
At home, you developed an introspective way of approaching your chores. You did them because it was expected of you and you needed that fiver for your Simpsons comic, but you often wondered if chores were just another mechanism of control. If I did this for them, the atmosphere around me would dilute, almost pacify, and again you learned that it was better to walk on tippy-toes, then allow your boots to be heard as you trod across the floor.
Your looks were commented upon, but never for gentle reasons. Your ginger hair was a mark of separation, just like the tattoo you got at twenty-three that would leave a permanent etching upon your skin. It is humorous to you now that partners call your hair “sexy” and “unique” when the words which used to calibrate your mind were “ugly” and “disgusting.” You mark that duality is both cruel and wonderfully freeing.
Through all of this, you see today that you are something. You grow outside the parameters of oppression that mould you to someone else’s viewpoint. You are wild, you are free and if others were to attempt to recognize you, through the visor of their own stagnant gaze, they wouldn’t be able to distinguish you. It’s in your otherness, that your beauty resonates.