To Do what I Must; While I Am who I Am

No, I do not bring happiness with me wherever I go. Not always.

To my love, my presence is sorrowful; It confronts him with the guilt of having done me wrong. It puts a pressure on him that prohibits, rather than enabling and encouraging him to open up to himself, to be open and vulnerable enough to question, probe, consider, and discover, the deeper reasons for his own restlessness. I know it is hard enough for him to find that vulnerability within himself alone, let alone before the image of a sad love, a person he has hurt and cannot heal. I feel (I fear) it might be better for us both not to bear this painful, wistful company, full of the flashing glimpses of regrets and roads not taken.

I read a guide to interview planning and etiquette. It's all tips I've heard before. And I feel an instinctive despair, a familiar objection from my very core: "This is not who I am!"

"It's only what I do." The second voice rises like an ocean over a desert, like rivers into the sea. It brings with it a rightness, a freedom. And perhaps it brings the problem well into light. Is it not a beautiful, distant dream? To be able to Do what I Am, rather than live a dichotomy, in the left hand the truth of Who I Am, and in the right the truth of What I Do, each clumsily struggling to tie separate knots, or, may all goodness forbid, the one constantly undoing the other's, rather than forming a graceful bow of mutual effort between them.

And yet, having not come to that place, the separation is a forgiveness. I may do What I Must Do, and this does not override Who I Am. I need not be fundamentally changed or overwritten to fill a less natural or fitting role. My capability is a fact, and my quirks flavour and enhance it, but while I Do other than what I Am - at the behest of others, to feed myself - my secret self is not deleted, but lies in wait like a spy waiting for his opportune moment to strike, or a caterpillar for his wings.

Even as I write this, every letter feels like a lie, the mere thought of the act is uncomfortable as deceit, and the excuse that I "have to" tastes bitter and hateful in my mouth. But perhaps, I can consent to Do even in service of my enemies, and to Do with my fullest capacity for excellence, while waiting and growing and stowing myself carefully away, preparing for the chance to Do what I Am, and bowl the world over at just the right moment.

Now if only I could believe it.

I must find some way at least for the two not to be in open conflict, or I shall tear myself apart...