When the Sheep Evolves

 

I keep my circle small. So small in fact, that when I post these publicly I know the vast majority of people I know in real life will blow past this post. It's been proven since 2014? is that my first post on here. 

The person who started writing then isn't the same person who is writing now. She was lonely and desperately trying to fit in somewhere, anywhere. She was overwhelmed and struggling with so  many things, so many. The person who started this set off to save the world through her writing. The person who started off writing, I wish I could hug her, and tell her, she is going to become so much more of the person she wanted to be. 

The person writing now, she's been through some shit. She has healed from some shit. She still feels lonely, I don't think we ever stop having those moments, we are human. I know I will never fit in to the places I spent most of my life trying to. I am in a race, with myself most days, just trying to be better then yesterday. Life is still overwhelming and that I have decided is a life long feeling . With that comes the realization that everyone has their own levels. Life struggles falls in the same category, it will happen to everyone. I can't save the world. I can't. Most days I struggle to save myself from drowning, but I keep trying to swim out there in the deep end. 

Every now and then though, something I read catches me off guard and it sparks something inside of me. Every now and then, the words and the thoughts mount up and I have to do something with them. This is one of those moments. 

I sit quietly and sometimes I am that loud voice you don't expect to hear in the back, and think. I am processing everything that is being said or told my way. I am taking it all in, and because I am me, I am usually asking far too many questions. Then I take all that, and I gather it. Sometimes it is used in my advocacy work, or the state boards I have been on, or in some of my other random projects. More often then not those little bits of information that are learned become the most important things I know later on. Somehow these things I don't know why they stick in my brain, become the key to unlock a door. 

This is where people underestimate me. They take my silence as compliancy. They take my loud voice as me being obnoxious not realizing, that when I get that loud, buckle up because I got the knowledge to back up that volume. They take an old version of me, and expect me to be the same, they expect me to be stagnant. They expect me because I can be loud, to be one note. They expect because I put things out here and there that they know everything about me. They expect me to be whatever version of me they think I am. 

Here's the thing, I am me. What version of me you get depends on well everything. I could have been best friends with you 20 years ago and right now, you don't know anything about me really. I would give a stranger the shirt of my back because they needed it, and I have no other feelings other then I wished them well. I can have been trough some deep shit with you and the moment I felt betrayed or left behind there is no coming back from that with me. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me, and there is no third time.

 I know I am the villain in someone's story, just like I have villains in my own story. I can be the villain in your story, because I am busy being the hero in my story.  I am learning that while asking for help is important, I need to know I got me. I need to have the power to be a hero. I can be my own hero, and that has changed my story.