This is Me! Yes Me! And I am Glorious!

I always, yes always knew I was different always knew there was something about me that wasn’t the same, that I didn’t quite fit what it was to be typical, what it was to be seen as one of the crowd, to fit in with how things were meant to be.

For a large and long part of my life that meant feeling like I didn’t fit because there was something wrong with me, that I was scared, wrong and had no hope of ever being what I was supposed to be, what the world told me I should be that I was in unworthy of any and all of that.

In year 7 in high school I discovered a song that kind of became an anthem for me. I sung it out loud I sang it in my mind, it was for many years an anthem that in some strange way gave me some solidarity with all the unworthiness and weaknesses and brokenness I felt. I was overjoyed when it was then covered and I saw it become something of an anthem for a new generation.

Have a listen:

What about me it isn’t fair. I’ve had enough and I want my share. These words were such a part of my everyday being my waking moments my inner thoughts myself belief they were kind of everything.

As an anthem though it lacked something pivotal, something strong something powerful something that simply said This is Me and me is okay, me is good and wonderful me is not broken.

Now I have found a new anthem. It’s such an anthem and it says so strongly:

This is Me!

This is Autistic me!

This is Trans Me!

This is Queer Me!

This is anxiety/depression me!

This is rejected by family Me!

This is Me! An Me is Okay, no not okay but glorious!

Now have another listen:

Watch and listen at the glorious diversity.

I think this is an anthem that so many from minorities, oppressed and supposedly somehow wrong we can turn the tables and claim! This is me! This is how I am supposed to be! I am glorious!

In a sense a giant middle finger A big fuck you to the world This is Me! And I am fantastic!

I’ve had this song playing on repeat almost constantly for days and at every playing I am a mixture of tears of joy and tears of pain. A sense of power and resistance! Every word is full of power, full of history and full of a powerful proclamation of resistance and self-worth.

Let’s have a look at a few of those lines!

The first verse sets the seen beautifully

I am not a stranger to the dark
Hide away, they say
’Cause we don’t want your broken parts
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
Run away, they say
No one’ll love you as you are

How many of us from minorities relate so strongly to these words? They are a message for me that I heard every day. I learned to know shame I learned to hide away because what I was was shameful. I learned to hide my true identity to hide it so deep it took 40 odd years to find it again 40 odd years to believe it to own it to accept it to come out and live it. For so many years I lived a life of pretending, attempting to be what I wasn’t and to continually fail and to descend back into shame. You’re not a girl, you’re broken, you’re weird, you’re useless, you are unworthy. Again, and again I learned to be “ashamed of my scars” to believe “no one’ll love you as you are”

But as I said this is an anthem. An anthem of resistance and celebration of me! Like I said This is Me! and so it shifts line after line of glorious resistance:

But I won’t let them break me down to dust

A statement of accepting it no more! A statement of no more of that thank! And it goes on

When the sharpest words winna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out

And when I stand those words don’t stop they continue. Both in words out loud and remembered words of the past. Not only am I going to stand but I am going to turn and stand I am going to turn and face and I am going to declare again This is Me!

I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me

Yes, I am brave, not because simply living my life is somehow inspirational to so-called normal people. No, I am brave because, well because living my life as me, as who I actually am is an act of defiance! But…

Yes, I am bruised because when I stand I take hits, because my history has bruised me. There’s no escaping that there are bruises and that’s painful and yet in spite, in absolute defiance of that I know I am finally being the person I am meant to be!

“Look out cause here I come” Yes look out because here I come I am not ashamed of who I am anymore I am marching proudly to the beat I drum. Not just a different drum but to my beat I drum!

After all the years of shame, isolation, unworthiness, no longer am I scared to be seen I make no apologies This Is Me!

Something happens when you behave like this, when you declare yourself as good enough, as wondrous, as glorious and that is that much of the world wants to put you back in that box all over again and so

Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)

That round of bullets come and you can take cover or you can fight back. I fight back because This is Me! I have to become a warrior, a warrior to just be me, because I am not going back to shame, I am going to keep bursting the barriers because This is Me and I am “Reaching for the Sun”

Yeah that’s what I have become a warrior to be me a warrior to claim my place in this world a warrior against enforced shame a warrior against a society that wants to other what is different, a warrior against a system that says different is wrong, broken, a mental illness a perversion a whatever. This is Me!

So many years wasted in shame. So many!

I want this anthem or one just as meaningful to my tribes, my trans tribes, my autistic tribe, my queer tribe, my depressed and anxious tribe, my rejected by family tribe, yes, all my tribes, all my peeps please find your anthem and declare alongside me This is Me!

This is so important, so important because you know what — 40 odd years of living in shame and unworthiness is far too long, fuck, any amount of time for any human person is far too long. Human diversity is wonderful and to be celebrated and enjoyed because we should all be able to say This is Me!

It’s an anthem for life, an anthem I can take within me and own, sing it out loud, sing it in my head, in my dreams in my longings in my hopes because it strengthens me again to say fuck the world This is ME!

This is Me — yes autistic me

This is Me — yes transgender me

This is Me — yes queer me

This is Me — yes mentally ill me

This is Me — yes isolated from family me

This is Me — yes, every little bit of me.

This is Me! And I am, you are, we all are fucking Glorious!