THE MIX AND WHAT DOESN’T MATCH

The things keeping you alive are the very things people insist on making you feel guilty for loving.

one random friday where coffee tasted good.

I hope everyone that harbors resentment from me would walk out of my life on their own.

Envy itself is not the problem it’s the selection of words that comes with it.

One that tells me I wouldn’t be able to afford a coffee at Starbucks. One that takes my low scores in quizzes as a punchline. One that emphasizes me wearing a dress for the first time till’ I feel uncomfortable in my own skin. One that tells me I’m stupid for thinking a man would like me back.

I can’t act pretty, privileged, or admired for a minute in my life because of how often I’m told that I wasn’t born with what seems to come naturally to other people.

I didn’t grow up attending beauty pageants. Even a mediocre in academics. Nor did I ever have the chance to pursue my dreams out of passion. But I firmly believe, that the coffee I choose to buy doesn’t make me an impostor. The person I choose to like doesn’t have to be an award I have to win over. Nor the art I make to be symmetrical, proportionate, and filtered to your taste to call it mine.

To make a passion belong to me without pursuit.

To art.

To love.

To be more than a ‘quiz bee’ level.

To be authentic and real of what I like.

And what I like didn’t have to concern people, but it does. Like alarms I didn’t set at 3 am, yet it rings and it reminds me with a sting… that what I am is not what I am born with. And in nature, I shouldn’t force what I am not. In their counter, of course.

But I do bad art. I often use the wrong colors, questionable shades, and remarkable outline I didn’t need to be showing up. And I wear clothes that are out of my color, with unmatched tops and skirts, and red noticeable shoes. I raise my hand in class with wrong answers. I read books but I can’t memorize a single script for a return demo. I buy coffees that imbalances my allowance for a week. But it kept me alive. Yes. All of what makes it wrong to other people kept me alive.

The books that didn’t make me academically smart.

The last seasoned clothes.

The expensive coffees.

The audacity to recite against conventional standard answers.

The artworks that opposites protocols and complimentary.

The guy I like…

Of what’s keeping me alive. Respectfully, let me have whatever I am performing to be.

That, I hope, everyone that harbors resentment from me would walk out of my life on their own, so that they do not have to live off seeking me to resent what I’m choosing to live for. Words may cut deeper than a knife, but I no longer want to spend my life proving that I need to survive them.