Frangas, non flectes

 

Photo by Matt Palmer on Unsplash

 

They say change. They say never waver. But I say—bend, but never break.
I don’t care how strange we might seem. I don’t care how far we’re willing to stretch ourselves to meet others’ expectations. What I care about is who I am, and who I’m becoming.

I’ve written about choices before, and maybe—after a few drinks tonight—I’m not making perfect sense. But perhaps sense is overrated.

Someone once said that greatness comes with two conditions:
1 – You know you’re different.
2 – You constantly feel like an impostor.

My idealism has often put me in situations where I feel out of place—misunderstood, misplaced, misjudged. I beat myself up endlessly. What if I just acted the way I was expected to? What if I became the person others wanted me to be?

But the truth is simple: I am who I am. And I’m tired of apologising—for who I am, for what I’ve done, for who I might become.

True to yourself

It’s taken me years to even begin understanding who I am. And still, I’m not quite there. I act spontaneously. I speak before I think. I overfeel. And then I look back, reflect, and hate myself for every word, every decision, every version of me that ever existed.

But tonight, as I walk down a frosted path, just a little more tipsy than I’d like to admit, I remind myself: there is so much more to life than this self-loathing cycle.
There’s beauty in every breath I choose to take.
There’s beauty in every step forward, even if it’s unsteady.
And there’s beauty—yes, real beauty—in every mistake I’ve made.

I could choose to stay in that comfortingly familiar place of misery. I’ve lived there long enough to know its shape.
But I don’t want that anymore.
And maybe you don’t either.

Breaking free

Why should it matter what I think of myself? Or what others think of me?
One day, we’ll all be as insignificant as we were when we arrived in this world—crying, confused, and unknown. Dust to dust. Meaning to meaninglessness.

What we do now won’t define us forever.
But still, we try.
We try to fit into these little boxes—tight, neat, and suffocating. Boxes that were never built for us to begin with.

So let’s stop trying.
Let’s break free. Let’s be wild. Let’s be real.
Be brutal. Be honest.
Don’t hide who you are just to fit the rules of a game you didn’t agree to play.

Because maybe—just maybe—if you show up as your whole self, someone else out there will finally see you and say: me too.

I want to be Frida Kahlo. I want to be Picasso. I want to paint like Gainsborough and frame the world like Jean-Luc Godard. I want to sit with Kafka and understand existentialism.

I know I never will.
But I can strive.
I can try to understand this strange world with all of these wild, beautiful dreams still burning inside me.

Compromise when it matters—but never forget who you are.
Your daydreams are not distractions.
They are the core of you.
They’re what have shaped you.
They are what make you whole.

Never regret.