To be yourself, you had first to reject the idea of there being a normal. This was easier said than done. Normal was what most people knew, and yet, if you asked them to define it, you’d find them tongue-tied, at a loss for words and absolutely baffled at their own stupidity. It was a good thing—to feel stupid. Once a person learned to be stupid, they learned to reject normalcy.
Then, you had to learn to change. This was easier than most people would ever believe. We changed faster than we could craft a story about it. It was the perk of being a human being to change on a whim. You could choose to wake up on the other side of the bed, change your favourite flavour of cake and the way you carried yourself, and no one could do much about it. Of course, they could say a lot, but doing anything about it was out of the question.
The next step was to be a part of something bigger than yourself. No, not to change the world and other things the spanning concrete forests echoing with repetitive platitudes will have you believe, but instead to test the limits of your dependency on others as well as the amount of horseshit you could consume without imploding. To know your limit for both was to be discreet at navigating the games of society you don’t enjoy.
Naturally, then, you had to love something to the tip of devastation. You had to drown into nothing but passion, enough to have songs sung or cautionary tales written about how not to love—all the while knowing how all the songs and tales were wrong. You’d know how powerful it made you feel and how weak, simultaneously. Someone who loved regardless of the cost mapped the depth of their own heart; to know your heart was to know yourself.
The last thing to do was to question everything, even the truth. It would destroy you. The last thing to do was to be destroyed. Love handled this quite well for most, but if you were a straggler, the truth did a fine job as well. Once you learned to question everything, including these words, you were yourself.
Of course, nothing much would change, as nothing seldom does, but you’d live a life most won’t fathom during your lifetime, and more importantly, after you were gone.