Don't be a Hard Rock when You Really are a Gem

I'm not gonna force it. Things are coming to me slowly. I can't believe it's September. Labor Day has come and gone and I'll be putting my white shoes away. I'm dyeing my hair tonight. It will come out Aggie Maroon. It always does. My little brother is in college now. He is a fish in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M University. I hear my father is elated. I'm hoping to catch a game this year. It will be my first in a long time. I know this is retarded Texan bullshit but this time of year--football season--and everyone in school, makes me think about what might have been. It will be many years before I will be able to go back to school. I'm sure my brother will have graduated by then. But what can I do? What's done is done. It's sort of a self-defeating prophecy for someone like me but I fight the shit out of it. It seems easy to feel like my life is ruined and relatively worthless so I question my efforts sometimes. I feel like I missed my shot and now I'm the washed-up athlete turned coach or something similar. It's not such a bad place to be, honestly; but the pang of broken dreams remains. Not to be confused with the birth-pangs of new dreams. Growing pains I suppose. I've been alone for a long time now and being with someone again has been a shock at times. I've grown selfish in my ways; I feel like I've had to in order to be able to get anywhere after the poverty of being imprisoned. I feel like I've had to in order to be able to trust anyone after he destroyed me. I'm warming up to it but it doesn't feel like it used to. It feels like I'm in slow motion. But I think that's a really good thing. I think it only means that I know too much now. I think it only means that I'm a woman now.
And I think that's okay.