(spoken word performance)

I once described myself as a river
I flow, I change, I fill spaces the way that they need to be filled. 
I am like a tree, reaching my roots into the ground, the dirt sliding up my skin
My hands and my arms are the branches, my fingers are the leaves, stretching up to the sky 
not to say, Look at me, here I am 
But to stay alive 
People hug me 
sometimes, when I let them 
People tell me I am pretty, and people tell me I am nice 
But when I am broken and crying on the bathroom floor 
They fade away 
Like a bell chime through the fog, there for hours and then 
gone
I once described myself as the sun
far away and distant, so pretty from down here
But up close, I am fire, and I am burning
From an indirect point of view, people tell me I am pretty 
But the closer you get the more you can see me writhing 
in my own skin
People say I am strong
But they clip me like they clip their fingernails
cutting off the parts that don't make sense to keep 
throwing away the shards that they don't want anymore 
Only a few of them act like my parent's siblings ex-husband
and keep the clippings in jars labeled "DNA - to be consumed on a later date" (?)
I once thought of myself as a warrior
I thought I would stand tall and strong 
For someone else to lean on 
And I carved lines in ink on my skin in patterns that shifted and swirled to camoflauge 
To fit in with what everybody else wanted, what everybody else looked like 
and I would sit up straight in those red and yellow chairs at school 
with a too-small tee shirt and talk to the teacher like I was her equal when in fact, I was 7
People say that I am interesting 
and I look at them with a look of surprise
and say, really? 
Wow, I guess I never thought of myself as "interesting" 
I used to imagine that when I grew up 
I'd be a gymnast (and I was, for several years) 
I thought I'd live forever on those scratchy blue floors and red, sticky plastic mats 
and I thought i'd always see my younger sister two mats over, falling over onto her little back in a purple leotard 
I thought Id live forever going to a gymnastics studio and flipping between two bars far above me
And then I got too tall 
People tell me I am caring 
I think I care too much. 
It is written in my genetics, from my father's side of the family, 
that I care too much 
and that I want to fix things and can't ignore them when they're broken 
My boyfriend says he might be a Freebern too.
It is in my nature, seared into my bones
that I should pick up shattered things and glue them back together piece by peice until they are whole 
I learned the hard why that that isn't always how it goes 
I once thought that I would be someone who didn't care about what other people thought 
I wore a skirt on my head and said, mom, I'll never fall in love 
and then I fell, I spiraled down and thought my wrists were weak and my face was flat and squished 
and I thought I was too tall, I thought I wasn't enough and I never would be
It took a web of hands to lift me up and show me, look, here's the sky, it missed you 
and it took a scrawny bleeeeep with a cool hairstyle to show me that I am strong 
and I am beautiful 
and I am talented 
and to tell me he can't wait to see the woman I become
I don't think of myself as anything in particular anymore. 
I am a girl who likes her hands 
I am a girl who paints her fingernails black and puts blush on her face like a sunburn because she likes the way it makes her eyes sparkle 
I am a girl who drinks tea because the caffeine makes life a little easier 
and also because she like the way it tastes 
I am a girl who speaks a little too much and sometimes not enough
I am a girl who loves and touches the world hesitantly, wearing gloves and then taking them off so she can feel things 
And I am also a girl who gets bored and laughs at memes. 

So, who am I, you ask 
Good question. 
I'll get back to you in 10 ish years.