Perfectly Flawed

I've heard a lot of things about myself for the last year, well my entire life actually. From the moment you're born, you are labeled and if you are lucky you are either labeled correctly or you know that the label does not define you. If you are unlucky, you spend years trying to fit into your label or finding what label to define yourself by. Either way, at some point you settle into whatever "self" you are and then proceed along within your own boundaries or those set by others.

I would call myself lucky because I was lucky enough to be born not belonging. I lived in Chinatown until I was ten years old. My parents were immigrants from the Dominican Republic, yet I was white, red headed and freckle faced. I did not speak English until I went to school and provided many a laugh when people would ask me where I was from and I'd reply "Yo soy Americana!" with great conviction.

After I moved out of our Chinatown tenement at age ten, moving on up to the projects of the Lower East Side, I was the only Dominican in a sea of Puerto Ricans. Having gotten a scholarship to private school, I did not go to school with my new neighbors. Once I went to boarding school, I remember feeling like the only place where I felt truly happy and content was on the trip to or from school where I could hope that better things were on the other side. Funnily, I never lacked for friends, or popularity. I was not bullied. I was just me wherever I was.

I could write a novel filling in the blanks from then til now, I might one day, but right now I'm oddly realizing that I have always been perfectly flawed. Some people only see the perfect, others only see the flaws. I see that everything that people find perfect is a flaw.

I am generous and loyal to the point that I never think about myself before anyone else. I am so honest that I do not have a private side and because of that I cannot tolerate dishonesty. I am always hopeful and trustworthy and because of that I am easily taken advantage of. I am loud and direct, obnoxiously so at times, so when others may be trying to avoid confrontation, I see it as avoiding me and honesty. I live in a world of greys and yet I judge myself and my actions in black and white.

When Alkey got sick at the beginning of this year, I never imagined that the rest would unfold as it has. The surgeries, the financial difficulties, the burden of carrying a family on one person's shoulders seems to everyone like it would be the worst year of your life. Yet, I am with the one person that I can laugh through this year with. I am with the one person that loves my flaws and my perfection. These hard times were punctuated by intense moments of love not only between us but around us to the point that I feel blessed for having been privy to them.

I suppose this is a sappy "cup half full" analogy, except I think we're all full to the brim with water half of it salt and have of it fresh. You just have to be thirsty enough to drink it all down and enjoy it.