life among wolves

the all-pervasive lie of the world casts gentleness as the worst kind of weakness - the kind that one who has it is stupid enough to let hang out in plain view.
I'm a fairly expert poser, but I know very well that the truth of oneself will always be revealed. I wish that caused me more joy than sorrow, but there it is. some are weaker than me, many stronger. whatever.
I can do damned little about that, but I can choose what I believe, even though I have been so hardwired to believe the lies that believing something else is the hardest work I have ever done.
the more I look back on some of the paths I yearned to follow for so much of my life, the less I believe I could have hacked it without being destroyed, or changed into a person that wasn't God's idea at all for me. that hurts like f*ck, but I have friends who have lived on those paths who believe in me more than I was ever able to. to feel like something that's indelibly tattooed on your soul is out of your reach because you're too gentle to embrace it feels like a slow death. there is nothing to do but trust One who knows better because He made me.
a large part of me still wants to be revealed as the embodiment of all the qualities I have lusted for and felt so incorrigibly bereft of, but if I make that my aim I will lose sight of what makes life worth living.
so I'm gentle, hesitant, quiet, apt to listen and watch before acting, quick to appreciate beauty, annoyingly open about the things that touch my heart, unfailingly surprised and dismayed every time life reminds me of a truth that should have long ago ceased to catch me off guard - that the world hates and fears that kind of person and is bent on destroying it, and no one is so divorced from the world that they are incapable of the same hate and fear - including me. but I get over it and start again, cuz I'm a hard f*ckin' target. and it's still a piss-poor idea to harm someone I love. to be gentle doesn't mean I'm incapable of brutality, only that I'm unwilling to be given over to or defined by it. those who are have lost the ability to see the end of the war or even hope for it. not going there.