I may one day dare to be me
I have always been different, it is who I am. I am lucky in that I have been different in a way that people don’t seem to find offensive. But when I think about this, I so wish I could have fitted in and belonged.
I have never in my life been part of a chattering, excited, joyful crowd of children or adults and I so wish I could have been, that I knew how to do things like that. Part of it was from a basic fear of, I’m not sure what, seeming stupid, getting it wrong and part of it is that I still cannot speak. Not properly, and I wish I knew how to explain this.
Put me in an author event, or ask me to give a speech or facilitate a group of people and I can shine and I can charm, but put me in a pub, at a party, put me with my family and my friends and so often, I am not only silent but I have just nothing at all to say. It is not that I have no wish to speak, it is that I am blank and empty of thoughts, empty of anything that might stimulate a conversation and what have the last three years taught me about this?
I think they have taught me that it doesn’t matter, though I struggle to actually accept that. For all my silence, for all the crashing boredom
I can stimulate, the lack of smiles and all this, Wendy still tells me she loves me and I haven’t a clue why. She tells me it is because she fancies me, that despite my claims to be evil, I am kind and gentle and provide some sort of stability in her life. And Wendy’s group of girlfriends, they seem to have accepted me, to think of me in a good way and the ex-sisters-inlaw, they want our company, and the nephews and nieces, some of them go to special efforts to speak with me.
It makes me very uneasy to say this, but I generally seem to be liked despite my difference. I am not certain enough of that to think I will make new friends in my own right any time soon and to be honest, even as I write this, I want to delete, delete, as it seems so patently absurd.
However, maybe after a lifetime of hiding myself away, staring balefully at the happy people and both hating them and wishing to be like them, I find that first of all I no longer hate them and no longer need to aspire to that state. I may one day dare just to be me.