Dragon Won't

Not Tonight

There are days when I reach into the creative well and all the words slip through my fingers like water, refusing to be caught. I used the last of my energy to climb this hill, to find the relief in writing that I can find nowhere else. There is nothing for me here today. I have nothing to offer, no words to justify my existence. Yesterday I spent my birthday being told over and over again, in no uncertain terms, that I am terrible at my job and had screwed up unforgivably. Today it got even worse. Every attempt at diffusing the situation (which I’m usually pretty good at) produced the opposite effect. Every attempt to find out exactly what I had allegedly done so wrong was stonewalled. Didn’t I already know? They had been so clear. I’m confused. Frustrated. Anxious. Stressed. I keep taking surveys of my body, what am I feeling? Where am I feeling it? I was just beginning to gain some confidence in my position, like I had overcome the impostor syndrome and was stepping into my own at last. Now…now it’s a choice that I do not feel equal to.

When I run out of words it is helpful for me to reread words I have already written. Sometimes I wince, ugh, that could have been better. Sometimes I glow a bit, damn, I’m good. Sometimes I read and remember, and suddenly I’m crying. Today I reached for “Dragon Rights,” because I needed to reread my Bill of Rights. Here they are again, this time edited (because, wince) and with a bit more detail added in.

• I have the right to remain silent. I do not have to defend or justify my words or actions to anyone. Those who seek to understand me will, those who do not want to will not no matter what I say.

• I have the right to speak my truth. Others have the right to refuse to listen, but no one has the right to shut me up.

• I have the right to base my opinions and reactions on my own lived experience and not anyone else’s. (Only I have lived my experience, only I see life from this exact perspective. It is mine and it cannot be taken from me.)

• I have the right to be human. (I can’t change my humanness, and I wouldn’t want to. I am me, warts and all.)

• I have the right to be angry, sad, disappointed, frustrated, irritated, confused, afraid, anxious. My emotions are real and valid, no matter who is inconvenienced by them.

• I have the right to make mistakes. (It’s part of the whole “human” thing, like pissing your pants when you’re learning how to not depend on a diaper. No shame in it.)

• I have the right to interpret what people say through the filter of my past experience. (Yes it will be colored by that interpretation, yes it is my responsibility to dilute that coloring as much as possible through keeping an open and curious mind, but the interpretation is unavoidable, and I won’t apologize for it. I earned my wariness.)

• I have the right to be wrong. I don’t have to be right to be deserving of respect.

• I have the right to be right. (And I have the right to stand by my rightness without sugar coating or qualifying it.)

• I have the right to belong. (Somewhere, with someone; I am allowed to enter and leave as many spaces as I need until I find one that fits.)