I Don’t Know

I still wonder
Every day
Who I really am.
Am I anyone at all.
Or no one.

I have no way to explain
This question I ask.
Everyone I know
Seems to know
Who they are.
What they want.
Where they wish to go.
Who they wish to be.

Not me.

I learned
When I was young
To survive.
In a world I never made.
A world I didn’t understand.
A world I couldn’t understand.

I learned
To watch the people
Around me.
Study them.
The things they did.
The things they said.
They way they behaved.
When they cried.
When they laughed.
How they dressed.

I learned to watch,
To study,
To observe

Everything.

I taught myself
How to become them.
How to behave like them.
Act like them.
Do the things they did.
When they did those things.

I learned to blend in.

I became a chameleon.
Putting on a costume
Everywhere I went.
Changing who I was,
How I behaved,
Based on where I was,
Who I was with.

I became
Who I needed to be,
Who I was supposed to be,
In the environment
I was in.

And who I was changed
Every time the environment did.

Somewhere along the way
I lost me.
I had to be so many other people.
So many other ways.
I had to bottle up
What I felt.
What I thought.
How I would have behaved.
Every day of life
For so long.

I had to blend in.
And be like everyone
Around me.

That I lost
Myself.

So when you ask me,
“Who are you?”
There is no answer I can give.
When you ask me,
“What do you believe?”
There is nothing I can say.
When you ask me,
“How do you feel?”
I can only shrug,
And lie,
And say I am OK.

Because I have no answer
For such simple questions.

And when I look into the mirror
Every morning I wake up,
And I ask the person I see there,
Looking back at me,
“Who are you?
Who do you want to be?”

The only answer
I have ever found
Is
“I don’t know.”

For I never learned
Who I am.
Or who I wish to be.

All I learn
Was how to be
What the people around me
Wanted me to be.

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