She walks around wrapped in her pride and a cute dress, looking at the world like she owns it. She sits down at her desk, disarmed, the virtual knives of strangers’ opinions stabbing her to her very core. She looks unshakable, for the mask she’s been wearing for so long has turned into a brick wall. But walls are just that, temporary protection, and the one in Berlin, too, crumbled like hers will. When her fear and self loathing slip through the cracks she’ll put a brave face on and say thank you to the masses who ran at her with a hammer thinking she couldn’t be destroyed. That’s what you get for acting tougher than you are. That’s what you get for being softer than you want to show. That’s what you get when you keep the best of you hidden for so long. That’s what you get and probably not what you deserve, that’s what you tell yourself in the comfort of your room when you manage to run away from the voices and all this noise. Finally at peace, away from it all, maybe that’s where you’re happy, but you want to go back out there and help them all. You’re a never-ending cycle, between an unresolved god complex and a dire fear of failure. You can blame it on the arms people are brandishing towards you, be they fists or helping hands. You can blame it on the stars or whatever God you pray to, they did you so wrong, maybe they have a plan. But you’ll carry on walking.
Someone has to.
Walking Oxymoron was written in 2015 about someone who mattered to me a lot at the time. I found the profoundness of what I expressed about this person ironically echoed my own shortcomings. I felt like making it public would be cathartic in its own way.