my identity

I have a million things to say, but my own words are stuck, like in a bottle, just waiting for me to pull the cork.  And I'm not sure when I'm going to be strong enough to do that, but it's not yet. 

However, being COMPLETELY done with nursing school, passing the NCLEX and getting a job (all to be blogged about at a later date), I have actually had time to read real books.  These words struck me:

"I get this feeling sometimes that after the world ends, when God destroys all our building and our flags, we will wish we had seen everybody as equal, that we had eating dinner with prostitutes, held them in our arms, opened up spare rooms for them and loved them and learned from them.  I was just another stupid child in the flow, you know; I didn't know any of these things.  I didn't know it didn't matter what a person looked like, how much money they made or whether or not they were cool.  I didn't know that cool was just a myth and that one person was just as beautiful and meaningful as another.  Not all of us are that smart, you know.  Not all of us run around naked like Adam and Eve.  You can hardly fault me for this stuff, can you?  Like I said, it felt important to climb the social ladder, it felt important to defend my identity, as though it felt like I was saving my own life."
(Donald Miller)

I wish I could rewind fifteen years and say this to myself.  I wish that the strict guilt-inducing education of my past may not have had such an impact on me, and my ability to form an identity.  Maybe not.  There's no way to know now.  But I do know that I want to love the unlovable, to look past pain, sickness, death...

 I am who I am.  It's taken me (almost ) 32 years to get here...but this is me.  Take it or leave it.  I still have so much to work on, but I can no longer apologize for who I am.  I can't do it.....I won't do it.

This is me.