Why I Cannot Be Who I Truly Am

By

I want to tell the world who I am.

I want to shout it at the top of my lungs, proclaim that I am who I am and couldn’t be prouder right now. I want to tell that no chains hold me down, that my door is open and freedom is mine. I want to tell them there are no strings restraining me, this is not me acting like someone else. This is who I am and who I have always been destined to be.

I want to tell them that I am at my safe haven, that it’s my safe haven is not just a place for me but rather a feeling. This is where I feel safe and nothing can change that. I want so badly to tell them to be like me, to be free, to be wild, to stop pretending and just accept yourself as I have accepted mine.

I want to but I cannot.

I cannot because I have no right to do so. Because in this world full of hatred, darkness, of absolute black and absolute white — there are no grey areas; you cannot be who you want to be if that meant stepping beyond what was written in a book from a million years ago.

In this world, they condemn what they do not understand. And sadly, they do not understand a lot. In this world full of mouths telling us that we should be who we’re supposed to be rather than accept who we really are, there are no contradictions.

I want to say that they should stop caging me into a box of assumptions just because they cannot grasp the fact that this is who I am and who I am is different from who they are.

But in this world full of people telling you that you and I are different in a lot of ways except who we’re supposed to love and what gender we’re supposed to be attracted to, I cannot, however, claim this.

I am proud.

Or rather, I want to be.

I want to be proud of who I am and what I’ve done to get to this realization. I want to be proud of the things I’ve learned and the things I will continue to learn in this path. I want to be proud of going against everything I was taught to believe so that I could fully come to understand that I am born in this world to be different. To stray. To divert. To lead my own path. I want to be proud of all those things.

I want to be proud to call myself human. I want to be proud of the fact that I am not a mistake. I am, like everyone else, a masterpiece. I wasn’t the bad thing that was needed to be created in order for the world to know what is good. I want to be proud of finally coming to terms with this, with the truth. I want to be proud and I want to show everyone that I am.

But in this world, in our world, I remain a coward and choose not to be.