opheliadoll

Finally, after this brutal, endless suffocation... A soft, cool breath of air...

I feel okay today. Not great, not wonderful, but okay. Content. In this moment, life is worth living.

This past weekend I went to the 25th Anniversary Chicago Poetry slam at the Metro. It was amazing, refreshing, enlightening... All this creativity and passion and anger and love...

People standing up on the stage, spilling their souls fearlessly, rhyming and rapping and singing and tapping...Mouthing words of tragedy, philosophy, comedy. It made me think that maybe there truly are people out there like me. People that travel around with cheap spiral notebooks, taking the world down onto the page when the feeling strikes...Trying to make some sense of this awful, amazing, violent, sexual world we live in...Just trying to make sense of it all. Swishing it all around in their mouths and then spitting it on the crowd to alleviate some of the alienation that burdens those who think and feel too much. Maybe i'm not so alone in here.

So I went to that, and it really just opened my mind to all of the great things going on in Chicago that I never cared to see were there. At night, when you turn the lights off, suddenly the city is alive. And it isn't just alive with the normal characters--the drinkers and smokers and dealers and fuckers. It is also alive with people like me...the ones who spend Saturday nights sitting on benches in Grant Park, staring into the sky...instead of the ones you can always be sure to find deep inside the clubs, 8 drinks in, getting woozy, drolling on to the thud of a dead beat.

When I walked back to my apartment after the show--walked back through the streets of Wrigley Field, streets swimming with bar hoppers and sleazebags, girls in short, unflattering skirts, ankles wobbling and twisting in shoes they don't have the class or capacity to be wearing, men in tank tops, revealing their giant bronze ken-doll muscles and shitty, ridiculous tribal tattoos-- all that I could think was "Wow...I am so glad to be...me".

I have not felt this strong of a sense of self-acceptance in what seems like an eternity. It is so tremendously freeing. This is not being said with the presumption that I am somehow "above" everyone else because I am the way I am; my goal here is simply to express the new found respect I have developed for myself. All this time, I have felt so alienated, so unlikable, so unable to be like "them", when really, I am goddamn PROUD that I don't fit in. Who WANTS to be another dime in a dozen? Who wants to be easy? I just want to be me...even if it means pain, even if it means loneliness, even if it means changing my name from Heather to Pariah.

So I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't use, and I never have. I don't care if this makes me "inexperienced," "lame," a "goodie goodie," or "pretentious". My morals go like this: If it doesn't interest you, don't do it.

So I always dress up and wear skirts, dresses, and heels--even in the middle of winter. FUCK all of the ex's that have told me to "relax," "be comfortable," and "put on some sweats, it'll be cute". And FUCK all of the self righteous conservative feminist women who have rested a condescending hand on my shoulder and told me, "Honey, you don't need to dress up all the time for men. Dress for you". I happen to feel most comfortable EXACTLY the way I am, and no man or woman is going to change that, thank you. What I am, (and I have never been able to say this before) is a real, independent, brave fucking girl. A girl who has been hurt, a girl who has been set apart, and a girl who has made the conscious decision to make choices based on one thing and one thing only: What SHE wants. And you know what? I fucking love that.

I love that I don't party. I love that I don't break laws. I love that I don't know or care to know how or where to get a fake ID. I love my black hair. I love my fair skin. I love that I wear girly sundresses and heels every single day, allowing the world to see the best me, and my favorite me, all of the time. I love that this comes naturally, that it takes no effort, because it fulfills me, because it makes me happy. I love my intuition, and the way it guides me towards situations that I feel comfortable with while deterring me from ones that I do not. I love my never ending capacity for forgiveness, and my need to free others from unnecessary pain. I love my sensitivity towards animals, and my shameless, endless commitment towards treating them with kindness and compassion, despite insults and instigation from those who are ignorant. I love my taste in music... The way I move when I can feel it flowing through my veins... On the streets, on buses, at shows, at home. I love my connection to words and sounds and emotions...The way a song or a sentence or a scene or even just a single look can make me cry. I love this, even though it often brings me pain. I love my confidence and willingness to do things on my own, like making choices without a second opinion, or taking walks with no one beside me. I love the scars across my body...they show me where I have been, what I have survived, how I have grown. I love the tears on my face, they show me that I still feel, that I am not too weathered to connect, that I am capable of releasing the demons inside of me. I love how even when I feel like I really hate people, I love them anyways. I love how when I feel like I really hate myself, I still carry on anyways.

I am imperfect, I am crippled, I am sensitive, and I am struggling...But I am not broken, I am not hopeless, I am not helpless, I am not I am not loveless...

When the days are grey and everyone is away... Remember, Heather, that someone loves you.