Who I am

I am a woman.
I am a daughter.
I am a wife.
I am a friend.
I am a citizen of the world. 
I am an American.
I am a Texan.
I am a worker.
I am an atheist.

I believe that, if you can help other people, you should.
I believe that you should always try to be kind to others.
I believe that if you see something wrong, you should speak up about it.
I believe that, if someone or something causes you pain or is toxic to you, you should remove them from your life.
I believe that you should try to appreciate the beauty in your life.
I believe that you should take good care of yourself because a lot of people love and depend on you and would miss you if you were gone.
I believe that you should believe in whatever you want to believe, but you should not tell others what they should believe.
I believe that you should try and learn something new every day of your life.
I believe you should speak more than one language, even just a few words or phrases; anything that will help you communicate to more people.
I believe you should learn and pay attention to history. History does repeat itself.
I believe that we only have one world and we all need to learn to get along. All of us.

I do not believe that religion should have any part in education or government.
I do not believe that you should tell others how they should live their lives, and they shouldn't tell you how to live yours.
I do not believe that you should cut others from your life strictly because they believe differently than you do. You should talk to them and try to understand them.
I do not believe that you should hate other people because they look or believe differently than you do.
I do not believe that men should have any say in what happens with women's bodies. It should be strictly the woman's decision. Men may have their opinions, but it's the woman's body, woman's decision.

All my life, I've felt that the people around me have been trying to keep me in progressively smaller and smaller boxes. As I got older and my personality and intellect got bigger, those boxes got more and more constricting, until I felt that if I didn't break out of them, I would be strangled.

I've always been told to act a certain way: don't swear, that's unladylike; don't complain if you're unhappy or disagree with others; don't make other people feel foolish if you know more than they do.  Don't brag. Don't act weird. Dress like other girls. Go to church, even if you don't believe because people will talk. "Don't act above your raising".

Of course, I'm a female. Being an unorthodox woman has its own set of challenges that men have no clue about, but of course, men are also affected by these societal rules. I'll leave it to men to write about their own issues. I only wish they would leave women's issues to women, but that's not the way of this country anymore, not that it ever really was in the first place.

I've fought against these rules my whole life and for  the most part, the struggle has wounded me both psychically and emotionally. It's been a constant battle to prove to myself that I am an intelligent person and I do have talents. I am funny and I am worth knowing. Most of the time, I cannot prove it even to myself anymore. Thanks to my mother, I did believe in myself for a while, because she believed in me when no one else did. I get very discouraged, especially in the current political climate. Empathy with other people simply does not matter anymore.

Sometimes I think about some little girl in a some small town who doesn't want to wear dresses, who isn't interested in fashion, or Jesus, or having a houseful of kids, being pressured into believing that there's something WRONG with her; because good little girls want to get married and have kids and they don't want to play music or make art or act or write, or tell dirty jokes.

There's nothing wrong with you, little girl. Listen to your mind. You know yourself far better than anyone else, and anyone who tries to put limits on you simply cannot handle what you are capable of. Keep an eye out for others like you and send out an empathetic thought into the ether. Maybe they can also have a shining moment of self-realization before it slips away again.