I am not who I was, who I am
Is not who you wished me to be,
Who you thought you saw as me
I am who I am, shaped into something
You cannot even comprehend in your
Minuscule mind, I have gained more than
I have ever lost, I’ve wilted and grown
Into something grander than what
You saw when you first set eyes on me—
I am not who I was, I am more, I am free.
There was a time in my life when how I perceived myself in the eyes of other people was extremely important. I called myself by other names and became something else, someone who ate the fruit of popularity and hoped I would gain something from it. These thoughts linger in the back of my mind to an extent. But slowly the meaning is losing its intensity. Because I see that it doesn’t matter. People will see you how they will. Your reputation will be marred in the eyes of those who only see you as your past self or as whatever their expectations are for you. But they don’t know that who you are now is not who you were then. Who you are is only something you can truly understand. No one can know you the way you know yourself. No one can fully understand your soul because no one can see inside you the way only you can.
Something happened in the midst of this noise and chaos. The walls of the kingdom I built burned to the ground. I was taken back to a previous time when people assumed things and made up an ideal for me. I was the good girl, the one who speaks when spoken to and is always polite, never dares to speak anything controversial. The bright and cheery one who is there for everyone and thinks of everyone but herself. I sunk into that. I disappeared into my innocence and caved when the snakes came to bite. They tore at my soul and left me for the wolves to eat up. But recently, I’ve realized that the ones who chase after you with the intent to tear you down are the ones who are the most broken and the most confused. They know not what they do. They are blind to their own whims.
I used to really hate myself. I didn’t always know it. But I did. Some days I still do. And you don’t see how much you hate until you are met face to face with the demons who haunt you. Some people ignore them until they are consumed by them and they don’t know how to defeat what has now become a part of them. They’re scared of the monster within. But I am not. You have to know what you are capable of to know how to become better than that. It’s the weak ones who don’t understand how corrupt and dangerous they are who fall and become the very thing they sought to destroy.
I’ve learned that just as kingdoms will fall, they can be built up. The walls of this place I’ve wandered have crumbled to dust just as the past must. For the past does not deserve our sentiments, and so I will not stay there.
So who am I now, you might ask? Well, I am becoming who I was always meant to be and the one who owns her name.