6:30 am The chippy irritation from my bedside table forces an unconscious groan. Starting from my curled toes swelling in tidal wave tremors to my twitching torso. Manifesting in indiscriminate slapping of lamps reading material and finally the clock…
If I were honest in my disdain I wouldn't turn on the lights nor spend a minute looking for acceptable clothes to appease civilization
…But I do.
People expect to see Me today, wrapped in preconceived ideologies. Some societal, some induced. Portions I have enabled - even propagated with detailed grooming rituals, ongoing hair color treatments, and anti-aging skin regiments.
Which is a lie
Because I still see it… everyone does. Minimizing at best. But "anti"? Not.
I aquiese to the expectations. Because this carefully crafted, death defying carcus is the only thing Most of them will ever know...
The painted coiffed decorated Me and my persona, coated in Teflon, sculpted to situations, an everyday chameleon who will never let one title stick to the hot rock climate I call life.
It has been said you are who you are when no one is watching. But my village watches.
Through most of this life, in and out of my glass house, I am in my universe a spectator sport with expectant fans. Where the others hope the receiver makes the catch, the singer hits the high note, the magician disappears…
And I enter. Stage right. With my highlighted spiky hair in perfect chaotic order.
(I let go for a very short season. The silence about it spoke of the disapproval. Yawn.
So what? I was grieving. I got better and gave in to recycling...
Hi honey, I'm home...with old Me.)
The "real" crowd touts transparency as a measuring stick of unfettered character. While border-free openness and lack of secrets may only make one a bad confidante… not a great person.
The diversity of Me is untainted by opinion. Purity needs no approval, nor apology. I am intentionally loud and quiet, public and private seen and unseen understood… and not. No lesser or greater. Equally Me. I am all that you see. Which, by the way, is the better part of Me.
They drive by daily. Casting stares on the angular structures in the city. Never doubting viability. Even though there were plans, predestination, packaging, posturing. Yet a man... a man with these four p's is branded of superficiality, rigidity, dishonesty.
People... Ignorance is bliss but you are WAY too happy criticizing contingency while mocking less than perfect charisma.
Disgusting.
So lost in your lack of personal direction that you prefer everyone else burn their maps… I have seen my map. I have planned the route. I have chosen the vehicle. The person I want you to see is who I am. Because that is all you will ever know. And I like him or I wouldn't be him.
Don't ask for my transparency. You couldn't deal with the guts of it all. That's okay too - you shouldn't have to. We all are who we are in the moment our lives intersect. Some murderers are loving fathers. Both are true.
So be sure of this one thing. I do my hair for me.