ME

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. ~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"

This summer has been a summer of many up and downs, some good things, some bad things have happened, I had sad and happy times, big changes and little changes have occured and it has been a summer of self-discovery, or maybe I should say things I might have known all along and thought of, but maybe was not willing to acknowledge and accept things as what they were. Things I am not particuarly proud of but things I know I have to accept because they are just my birth right or whatever you might call it, things I would have liked to change, but you can't change things that are born and bred into you, so what better to do than to just accept them as they are. I also have learnt that some people have expectations of me as a friend, that I am not willing and/or not capable of fullfilling, and that is just how it is. All my life I had tried to conform to others point of view of me, and even tried to mold myself to how I thought I should be, but there are just things about oneself that are your and only your traits, like them or not, and I don't feel I have to explain why I do things differently and why I do the things I do to be there for me and look after me. Most of my friends have accepted these things and they know that when I am ready and rejuvinated I will be rejoining the rest of the world, but all in good ( my) time. Being a certain way by nature makes some things harder to do than they are for others, I don't thrieve on the same things as somebody else, I just don't and that should be ok. Things that might be minor to some might be huge hurdles to me, and that's ok, I will get around them in good ( my) time eventually. I have to try to stop fighting being me so much and just be, like it or not....that's all I really am.