When I Grow Up

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They told me
I could be
Anything I wanted
Asked me what
I meant to be
When I grew up
When I told them
"I want to be a mommy!"
They changed their tune
"You can't be a mommy
You can only be a daddy!"
My life could be
A consolation prize
And then they wonder
Why I don't know me

Why I don't know me
Who do I want to be?
What is the point
Please won't somebody
Tell me

I never figured out
Who I want to be
Because the one thing
I actually wanted
Wasn't allowed
Now 30 years later
I still don't know
I'm a mommy (sort of) but
I can't settle on
Anything else I want
Want to be
Want to do
Want to have
30 years have passed
And I still expect to be told
I can't have what I want
It will be taken from me
If I dare to admit
Who I want to be

Why I don't know me
Who do I want to be?
What is the point
Please won't somebody
Tell me

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Comments

It took me five decades of trying to be.......

D. Eden's picture

What everyone else expected me to be........

Before I realized that what I was always told when I was but a child is actually true. You truly can be whoever you want to be if you simply put your mind to it and work hard enough.

So, now I am finally getting to be who I was always meant to be. Who I always have been deep down inside, hidden away behind a sad facade which my family and society had built brick by brick throughout my childhood, my teen years, and even unto adulthood. Until one day I woke up and remembered what I had been taught as a young child - that no one can hold me back except myself.

Yes, I will never really be the me that I see when I close my eyes at night. Yes, no matter how hard I work, o matter how long I am on hormones, no matter how much surgery I put my poor, tired body through, the reflection I see in the mirror will never match the me I see in my mind's eye. But then again, how many people ever do see that person?

It is enough for me right here and now to know that I am a better person and closer to being that which I was born to be than I have ever been before. And I get closer every day.

D

D. Eden

Dum Vivimus, Vivamus

This kinda bubbled out of me

This kinda bubbled out of me this morning, thinking about how that one denial shaped my whole life. Maybe it's why I'm indecisive, afraid to do anything unless I know I CAN, afraid of doing things wrong and getting in trouble. Maybe it's why I couldn't really find something I loved to follow in college, to aim for in a career.

If the people who refuse to allow their kids to transition socially as young children could feel what I feel that made me write this, even just for a minute, they would go out shopping with their kiddos the very next day.