Bound and Broken

I've always pictured myself to be a free spirit. Unbound by the world's conventions, though part of its spiritual fabric. Someone who feels every passion, every desire, every dream, every whim, is to be pursued and everything else is to be left behind. Someone who journeys with the wind, and changes as it does. Someone whose fire dies with her taming, and so must always run in wild abandon. Someone who cannot put down roots and must always be free. This personal visualization gives off a heady and romantic perspective on how I should go about life:

I would always be elusive to everyone who tries to catch me. I would be mysterious, intriguing. So near...yet so far. Otherworldly. I cannot be restricted, and must always run. The only way to keep me would be to set me free.

Maybe that's why I have such a fondness for Miyazaki Hayao movie animations. His characters are often mysterious, ephemeral, fragilely beautiful, and free-spirited. They hit the soft spot of my personal fantasies. They keep you on the edge, waiting, anticipating, and in the end, you yearn and ache for either knowing you cannot have them or for not knowing if you can have them, or when. And you have to watch over and over again, even if it's just to relive those moments with those characters.

I guess I've carried this fantasy over to real life. From what I've learned from friends and classmates over the years, I am indeed somewhat elusive. Elusive in that I tend to hide who I am behind this mask of indifference and seriousness that I had cultivated in my younger years and have now mastered. It takes me a long while to let my guard down. I am a rebel, a nonconformist. I question rules and dislike them (I create my own). I've gone through situations where I bent or altogether broke them. And yes, I have this tendency to run. I run away from situations that make me uncomfortable, make me own up, situations that I don't like, situations that tie me down. When I feel choked and restricted, I want to move where I can be free. And I do believe that I should not be the one to adjust to other people. Rather, they should adjust to me.

But now, I'm not so sure anymore. I've broken my own rules. Years spent having to conform has mellowed me into wanting to be accepted, to be liked, to be approached, to be needed. And those I haven't achieved at all. I still stick out in an odd way not entirely to my liking. I am not needed, not really liked on the whole. Not even approachable. I feel like I am ordinary, mediocre, and boring. I merely exist, without real purpose or meaning. I am not myself. I am not alive where I am.