I am Terrified.

Not all the time, no. Only when I look in the mirror

and see

a girl who doesn't know where she fits

and a girl who doesn't feel

like anything more

than half of an intangible whole.

When I am Terrified I am a weak rain that breaks through clouds not yet strong enough to block the sun 

and dies in minutes on dry pavement.

I am a whisper of wind blowing a door open and closed across the house when you know

you're home alone.

When I am Terrified I am nothing. 

Nothing.

And I tell myself so. I look Terrified in the face and I tell her, 

YOU

Are nothing.

But when I look away from the mirror I realize

the mirror is where Terrified lives. 

If I look away from the mirror I look away from the fear,

and I start to live as More. 

When I am More I am a thunderstorm that shakes the thin glass of your apartment windows

and puddles into gutters because the sidewalk cannot contain it.

When I am More I am a house built so strong no wind can rattle it;

A fire is always burning in the hearth and a low hum of music always plays downstairs somewhere,

strummed by a confidence unseeable and sometimes

unknowable.

When I am More I realize that I am not "More". I am simply myself. Because More,

she's powerful. She's beautiful and strange. She's bittersweet and filling and fufilled. And she doesn't live in any 

god damn

mirror.

More can smash the mirror, I 

can smash the mirror.

I am not The Girl Who Chews Her Nails and Bites Her Lips.

I am not The Girl Who Laughs Too Loud.

I am not The Girl Who Stands On Stage With Her Arms Outstretched,

Begging,

Pleading For People To See the Real Her Through Her Words

Voice

Movements

So That She

Can Feel Like At Least the Half of Herself She Has

Is Tangible.

And I am not them because I am them, but those girls, 

They are not what they are.

The Girl Who Chews Her Nails is the Girl Who Chews On Pencils, Pencils That Write Worlds

and Draw Galaxies. She chews because she's anxious, eager,

excited to see what the next piece of paper may bring.

The Girl Who Laughs Too Loud only does because she's The Girl Who Wants to See You Smile.

She tells so many dad jokes she may as well have an apron -

"Kiss the Cook",

she says. 

The jokes are hit or miss

but the intention remains the same. As constant as that quiet confidence

flowing through her house like music.

And that girl on stage.

The girl that pleads.

She is all that

and

More.

 

 

 

 

Terrified's got nothing on me.