Lord, have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways.

There is an expectation that we have of others, with regard to how they are and how they should be. To those who are familiar with me, I am often happy and laughing and friendly, albeit while also being deep-thinking and sometimes lost in my thoughts. But sometimes I’m angry, I am frustrated; I am filled with venomous passions. And I have had to learn to temper those passions, to seclude myself, in order to not speak or act out of anger because I don’t want to. But I also don’t want to put on a performance of being happy and laughing and friendly when deep inside, in the moment, I am not.

And if you stray away from this expectation of whom you are who you should be, people around you become uncomfortable. There is an inability to deal with the inconsistency of you being something other than what they are used to you being. You might even get the comment, “You’re not your usual self.” And maybe it’s within someone’s right to perceive you as not being consistent with whom you’ve presented yourself as being. But maybe more than that, it’s within your right to be something other than your expectations, even if it’s only for a moment. What is a usual self? Because when I’m angry and irritated, I feel like myself, it’s a part of who I am; it’s just a part that more often than not, I like to keep to myself.