I am a person who gets easily addicted.
From music, to people, to issues and weather, I get addicted to everything that I like. ( Note that I am not refering to any intoxicant here). I know I'm not much unlike anybody else I know, with the only difference being that I'm unable to control my feelings or reactions like the others around me.
Call it impulsive or whatever you may, but I still havn't learnt how to hold back and give one piece of myself at a time. I have to go all the way or else sit back. There is nothing in between for me, and there is no agenda that drives me to show my emotions or to hold them back. They either explode, or just lie there, still and unheeding.
I'm probably half way through my life, and right from the time I learnt to think, feel and say, from the time I was a very young child, everybody told me to watch out. Everybody tried to teach me how not to be reckless. How not to just let go.
I never understood what they were saying and I also never questioned why they were who they were.
They were afraid I would destroy myself, and ruin my life.
I'm still here, so many years later, as who I was. I'm still indestructible, still able to stand for what I say and what I do.
And it comes easy to me...
They could see the pain I revealed and I could see theirs. And they believed they had concealed it well.
Like they didn't dare to be like me, I never attempted to be like them.
Many have told me that my life would have been better had I not done this, or had I done that.
I don't think so. I could only do what came naturally to me, and was never able to do what didn't.
I'm not saying I didn't give it a try. I did try to be different. to them which was normal, at which times, my elders would be happy with and for me.
But I wasn't...
So it wouldn't last long. I would have to go back to my ways and be who I am, and in being who I was, I was most comfortable. My attitude had to fit me like a good pair of shoes for me to be able to walk well.
Oftentimes, I was told that there was no need for me to be different.
I had no words or logic to convince them that it was otherwise. I was born this way. It was they who had given me birth, and they who were responsible for the circumstances in which I was growing up.
And all I was doing was living and breathing...
Only doing what it took to survive.
But hell no!!!
When I stumbled and fell and looked around me, I could see that the eyes watching were speaking to me.
And they were saying, "look we told u so. Now it serves you right and hope that it teaches you the lesson of your life".
When others, who were unlike me stumbled? Everyone rushed to help them. They sympathized with them and gave them a hand so they could lift themselves and walk again.
I would lend a hand when needed too...
But when I tripped, there was nobody to do that for me.
Left with no choice, I just had to learn to get up and force myself to walk each time I fell. Time and again, one lap of life after another, every time I slipped, I built within myself a greater strength and a mightier resolve, to get up one more time. Because according to them, I had made my own choices, thus responsible for them.
I hadn't paid heed to their advice so this was the price to pay...
I did nothing when they had the last laugh. I said nothing when they tried to straighten me up. Because, by the time I was through with my last fall, I had understood one thing. That it was they, who believed I was different. And it was they, who set the rules, write the constitution and lay the law.
And in their book, there is no mercy for those who decide to live life on their own terms.
They will not know that I have never had the luxury to live my life on my own terms.
God help them, if I ever had...
This, is just the way I am.
In changing myself to be like they want me to be, I will have to walk in uncomfortable shoes forever.
They will never know, but I know, that in those shoes, which are either too tight or loose for me, but according to them, right for me, I will not just stumble, fall, slip or trip, but I will be left with no choice bu to die.
For me, in making a choice between being who I am, and being what they expect me to be, there is but one meaning.
That is the choice to live or to die.
And I have chosen to live.
To survive...
Comments