Who am I?

If life has shown me anything recently, it's that I'm sorry I'm broken.

But this is who I am. This is what I am. And because of that, I live in a nightmare that's far more complicated than anyone would ever understand. You can try to pierce the shell, but I armor myself with strangeness - dealing with it isn't ever easy, even for myself.

Kiss a needle, or hold a cactus - the closer you get, the more I push back. I'm sorry. It's not really my intention to hurt, but the natural reaction born from a life of distrust. Humans make me sick, so is it any wonder that physical contact makes me flinch? That any words spoken are taken as lies, sprung from a paranoid mind? That 'normality' seems so far away that it's not worth reaching for?

Being me is never, ever easy. Despite how much you may think you know me, no one has even scratched the surface. If you think you know who I am, think again. It may be more befitting to you to assume you know nothing about me, and maybe you'd be closer to the truth. Until you've walked down the road I've been on, and tasted the blood of hundreds of lives on your hands, please don't assume things about me.

You mention love and happiness, but my life has been a stream of negative emotion. I'm devoted to others, but never to myself, and I may never be. These are foreign concepts to me, and although I've encountered them now and again, there are some things that just can't be fixed. Consider the fact that these things make me who I am, and maybe I don't want to change. Please don't guilt me, it's always something hard to do, but it needed to be done. Struggling through things while life gets worse is never a sure bet, and telling the truth is always harder than whispering lies.

No, I'm not normal, but I never claimed to be. No, I won't be alright, I may never be. No, I'm not ready for this, and I tried; but life hardly works like this. Maybe in the future, maybe never, but time will tell. I'm just broken... and I don't know if I want to be fixed.