I wear so many labels I feel like an antique suitcase that's seen the world.

When I was in grade school, It was trouble, fat, stupid, ugly, distracted, exasperating, defiant. I would go get on the merry-go-round and the kids would get up and run away. For some reason the kids at the bus-stop targeted yours truly. As an adult I don't blame them, children mock what they envy, or what intimidates them. I was smarter, funnier, talented, but dirt poor. That gave them an in.

As a teen, it was trouble, defiant, dishonest, depressed, distracted, disrespectful. I had pushed so hard against everyone that they threw their hands up and gave up on me. This is where I started to realize I was not like other people, not in that disillousion of grandeur way, but I was just different. Still, I thought it was cool that the rejects thought so much of me. I was the coolest loser to know. That was something, if I had nothing else. I sold pot behind the school library during breaks.

As a young woman, for the most part it wound up being depression, bi-polar, ADD, borderline. It was really none of those things particularly, pills couldn't fix it, because it wasn't something that needed medicating. I decided to medicate myself in an attempt to ignore my differences, and that didn't work. Mental health proffesionals couldn't figure me out any more than I could figure myself out. I once swallowed a bottle of pills and drove myself to the Brown County Mental Health center at 1am. They wouldn't let me in, told me to go to the hospital to be admitted. I drove all f*cked up back over tower drive bridge and at the stop light before the hospital, one of the hoses under the hood blew and steam came blowing out. I actually laughed, I took a right, went to my apartment, puked and went to bed. The next day I was fine.

So now, I do get depressed, I am distracted, I am a bit paranoid and lost. But I've accepted those things as a part of me, the part that will stay on the inside, I've learned to live around them. As I move through my life I gently peel those labels off one at at time. Some of them leave a mark they've been there so long. Some of them peel right off. Some of them I have to soak for a while because they are good and glued on.

But that's ok, one of these days I imagine I'll get them all off, and the world will no longer be able to tell where I've been.