A Plea

"Sometimes I wish you would just let me be me.

I understand that change is a part of life. I don't like it but I embrace it as best as I can. Life changes, the world changes, you have to change with it or else you'll stifle yourself and become swallowed up with grief, dissatisfaction and a longing for things that were and can no longer be.

But I cannot change who I intrinsically am, deep down on the inside. The past shapes our present and our future. Every minute of life that ticks away turns present into past, and paves the way for what's to come. How can you expect me to entirely shrug off my past and who I was, and become just what you want to see me be?

I have changed after knowing you, I know this and I am not unhappy with who I am. Yet I also long to be all my other selfs, the selfs that you don't know, the selfs that when you glimpse in brief spasms, you ask for them to go away.

Something from Hanif Kureishi's Intimacy struck me as infinitely true: we are all ages at once.

I am now who I am now, but I am also who I was before I met you, before I came here and became this. I am all ages at once and you have to learn to accept that. Just as I accept you.

Acceptance of past behaviors is one thing, but acceptance of past selfs is another.

You view the past as a jar that has had the lid screwed on tight and can be put away on a high and dusty shelf, never to be opened again.

For me, the past is also contained, but only in a loose and billowing net that follows behind me with each step I take into the future, from which memories and selfs come drifting forward from time to time. They remind me of where I have been, and illuminate my path so I may know where I am going.

I cannot disassociate from who I was, forget the feelings I felt, abandon my past because of my belief in a glorious future that you promise to provide. I love being all my selfs, being nudged on some random occasion by some random memory that triggers some deeply buried emotions. I cherish my past, and I have no regrets. I accept it, learn from it, and ache to share it with you - but you don't want to know the me I was before you.

You love me deeply, I know this. But you don't love all those people that I used to be, just what you have seen me be for you. When I stray from your frame of reference, you are engulfed in fear and loathing and mistrust. You assume the worst of me, doubt my intentions. You despise my past selfs and you want to keep them contained to prevent your perceived reality from coming crashing down your ears.

You are posessive, I understand this. But all posessiveness is born out of insecurity and fear, and I am exhausted from proving my fidelity - have my actions ever proven otherwise? You don't know or understand or appreciate the energy and sacrifice it has taken for me to come this far, to change so much. And yet I continue to have to prove myself.

Perhaps it all comes down to this. You demand fidelity of actions, yes. But you also want me to turn my spririt over to you - and that I cannot do. I reserve the right to be all ages at once, or else I will quite simply extinguish.

Love, loyalty and devotion form a straight and narrow path from which one cannot stray. I understand this and am happy to accept it. But while I may follow this path, I also see many other hidden roads and many other mysterious destinations emerge out of the mist. Roads and destinations that may have been mine if my past selfs had evolved into something different from who I am now.

You know about these dark and meandering roads of imagination that I wish to wander down, and you fear I may get lost in them and never return to you. But letting me go and letting me be my past selfs would be the surest sign of your love for me.

For the only thing that will make me return to you again and again and again is knowing that you love me not only as I am now, but as I was, as I have been.. and as I always will be.

Please. Just let me be me."