I Am Who I Am

No teasers of the novel today, sorry, but I do have an update on it.  I just finished editing Chapter 17 and have started on Chapter 18 which I hope to have done by the end of tonight.  I have thought about giving the individual chapters titles (something that I absolutely adore in other books such as the Parasol Protectorate novels) but I am not sure if I should or not.  I would like to have witty and lighthearted chapter titles but that might not work since the book isn’t that lighthearted.  After all one of the characters is perhaps one of the most unfortunate characters I have ever met.  The things that this woman has been through in her many years of existence would shatter and break the minds of most, yet she perseveres.  She is actually one of the more optimistic characters in the story, yet I think somewhere deep inside there is battered and broken individual who is putting a brave face forward.  But this is me speculating, I haven’t gotten to know her very well due to the small role she has in this book. 

The second book on the other hand should be interesting since I will get a lot more time to spend in her head.  Not that I have started on the second book yet, just saying.  Speaking of the second book, I am going to have four main characters in it.  Two of them I have given you, my dear readers a glimpse of… That would be Jonah and the previously mentioned woman (See previous paragraph), Sephira. The other two are Alissa (she is a big player in the first novel) and the mysterious Doctor Sliss, an Ibian who joins the three main characters at the end of book one, but what is her true purpose?  Anyways, here is the real reason I posted… Enjoy.

I am who I am.  That will never change.  I don’t like what I am.  That will never change.  Very few people know the struggle that I live with every day of my life, even fewer know about the real me.  I want to be free to be me, but I know that that will never happen.  I want to shout from the rooftops, tell the world who I am inside, shatter the illusion I maintain for the sake of society.  I want to tell the world so that I don’t have to pretend anymore.  I want to be able to be who I am not who people think I should be.  I want to break these chains that I have placed on myself to hold me in, shatter them and scatter them to the corners of the earth, but that will never happen.

The world is a dangerous place for people like me.  We have no place that we belong, no place to retreat to when the world is out to get us.  Once the world finds out who we are then it is only a matter of time before we find ourselves beaten and bloody, sometimes physically, sometimes mentally and sometimes spiritually.  The places that we once could go to escape, places that are supposed to be filled with family and love, are shut off.   There is no escape at that point, no way to get away, no place to retreat too.  We are truly alone.

I have to hide myself, tuck my true self into a corner, not letting the world see me for what I truly am.  I do this partially out of fear and partially out of shame.  I’m afraid of what people will think I’m afraid of how they will treat me if only they knew.  I am ashamed of the fear that plagues me.  It causes me to be miserable in my life.  Maybe one day I will revel myself to the world, but that is going to be no time soon.  For now I just sit in this shell and wait, living the lie I live.  No one suspects, no one knows, no one sees, the real me.