I will never be prim. I will never be proper. I will never be prim and proper. Fitting in… fading into the background… is simply not something I do. I do not think I can do it. I am loud. I am opinionated. I am “too much” and in the same essence, I am not enough. I will never be enough because in this Southern world in which I live, I am a circle and they want a square. It will not fit. I refuse to change myself to fit the definition others write for my life. I feel like a technicolor rainbow in a gray expanse of sky. It has caused so much anguish… caused so much pain, heartache, loneliness … because I can be in the middle of a crowd and be completely alone. Women like me do not get their happily ever after. We are in the villians in the stories the world writes.

Yet, I’m not capable of being anything other than who I have grown to be. I cannot unlearn who I am.

I am a Marilyn and well, the world wants a Jackie.