Final Scream

Sometimes I just can’t keep quiet.

When there are signs everywhere I look telling me that it’s no longer political but personal, I feel compelled to speak out.

I don’t need an argument.

I don’t need to hear your side anymore.

I don’t even need to tell you mine.

I just need to scream for a few minutes.

So as I inhale deeply and ready myself for a tantrum, I’d like you to remember a few things.

I have already been disenchanted.  I have already fought.  I have already been cast away.  I have already decided that I no longer want to listen.

I thought I could live with you with a quaint fence between us.  We could grow a rose garden alongside it and paint it yellow.  We could stand on either side and smile at each other and exchange a recipe or talk about the weather.

But then I started seeing the grass on your side.

It wasn’t greener.

It was brown.

And ugly.

And covered in filth.

And you refused to smile.

You refused to legitimize my right to have another sort of yard.

You demanded that I break down the fence and embrace your version of green even while you built a wall of judgment twice as thick as the fence I was trying to mend.

So when I scream it’s because I have just a little more anger and resentment to get out of the way so that I can move on without you.

I AM DONE WITH YOU!!! FINISHED, FINISHED, FINISHED!

I have grown distant from you.

I have grown to hate what you stand for.

I have grown to feel sickened by your version of Torah and Mitzvot.

I have grown to be embarrassed by the way you look, the way you act and the way you speak.

I have grown to realize that your hold on me is from an unhealthy indoctrination I once tried to shrug off only to learn to accept it as my roots and try to embrace it out of necessity because I was so damn scared that without you I would be nothing.

But I am not nothing.

Without you, I am something special.

Without you, I am worthy.

Without you, I am independent.

Without you, I am capable.

Without you, I am responsible.

Without you, I am fallible.

Without you, I am human.

Without you, I am a child of a God who could never tell me to be like you because, unlike you, He loves me for who He made me to be and, unlike you, He lets me figure things out for myself because He knows that the brain and the heart He gave me are immensely useful in my never-ending quest to find Him.

So have your million man march – because my kind of belief will always allow you to express yours – but leave me the hell out of it.