learning the one too many faces of myself
I don’t shed my skin, I wear new ones
Sometimes I can clean up pretty well while other days I live in an utterly disheveled state. I like to use pretty words and make people feel cherished but I also like to swear so fucking much and can be mean to those I love. I like lofi music that I can close my eyes to but also enjoy blasting my speakers with loud songs. I like dancing in my room and making it my safe place but I also can’t organize shit to make it less cluttered. I’d love to join the slow living club but I’m also hella impatient.
For so long I thought I should just be one thing. One thing to define me and that was it. I felt so torn, groundless. Why couldn’t I just know who I was? Why was I always full of contradictions? Some people seemed to have it together. A neat color palette of clothes, a defined music style, they were either approachable or not. Period. They made it look so easy so why couldn’t I be like them? it was hard to accept me as the fragmented, ever-changing human being that I am, that, in the end, we all are.
I don’t know when or how exactly I began to understand that human beings are made of scraps of a million different tiny things. We’re all contradictions and scattered fragments. Fragments make us whole so I don’t necessarily have to fall into a single category, I can be so much more. I already am.
I have a lot of faces and they’re all me.
I used to peel old versions of me like getting out of clothes. Now I prefer to overwrite new versions on top of each other. It’s messy but I realized sooner than later I’d end up missing who I’d been only to find out there was nothing left from that girl. Today I like to build myself like pieces in a puzzle, so I can look back and trace where I’ve been, how long I’ve came and each version of me that has been here.
I heard someone say that in order to create a new version of ‘you’ you must throw a funeral so it’ll go easily. Now I prefer to throw birthdays at each new version that comes up and when I move onto another one, they’re not really ever gone, since they’re all me. I’m one and all at the same time. I’m a creature of many faces. I don’t shed my skin, I wear new ones. The version of me you see today is just an array of every person I’ve been, a kaleidoscope of old, new and future me.
I’m 24 but I’m also 18 and 10 as well and even 3. In a way, I’m even 42 and 63 too. I’m the child, the optimistic, the naïve, the betrayed, the one consumed by grief, the awkward teen, the scared one, the one who surrounded herself with emotional walls, the never fitting in one, the weird one, the hopeful one, the caring one, the mean one, the bad daughter, the hurt daughter, the selfish one, the one with big dreams, the one too scared to follow her dreams, the dreamless one, the adult, the girl, the woman. As scattered as they might be, I’m each one of them and they’re me.
I’m an ever-growing flower, always growing on itself, carrying all her petals while she keeps blooming (sometimes decaying too). I’m the seasonal fruit that keeps on giving all year long. Only my body is here, I’m actually every and anywhere in my life. I’m laying in bed at 1 AM writing this, I’m scrapping my knee at the playground and I’m also somewhere in the future dying. So why should I pick only one version of myself and stick to it when I’m all of this?
Written originally on Tumblr and Substack
