Do you ever wonder if you will forever be defined by the things that happened to you?
I do not want to write one more goddamn essay about a challenge I’ve overcome.
I am forever trying to earn my way back to polite society.
A debt that should not have been charged to my account.
And fairness only exists in fairy tales.
We are all sinners.
But how long must I pay for my own, and for others’?
At some point you lose who you are.
It becomes ever more difficult to separate your sense of self from the lies told about you.
And you just live in the sludge, trying to assemble the parts of you that are you, to pull yourself out, but is that really my arm? Really my hand?
These things I’ve seen with my own eyes, felt with my own hands, are they real?
How can they belong to me when I’m told what they’ve seen and held is not true?
I am not a crystal to be so shattered in the mud. I am oak, and iron, and leather.
And I will find a way through.
Laughs and Lobotomies 