Whittling away

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best,
night and day, to make you everybody else
means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight -- and never stop fighting. "
~ E. E. Cummings

***

I wish it weren't so hard.

I wish the battle didn't exist.

I wish I wouldn't have to fight.

But it is, it does, and I have to.

Or I die.

I've heard it said if you keep trimming yourself down to what someone else expects you will soon whittle away to nothing.

I believe it. So I keep fighting.