I don't know if it's approval I seek. Or is it forgiveness? Is it understanding? Or is it simply peace. All that I know is that once I finally let myself write again, ever since I have been unable to stop!

I completely understand that after three weeks of blistering work that led me to flee writing rather than embrace it, followed by a week of high fever as my reward and reprieve, coupled with this glorious read and mass of inspiration whose diction I cannot but revel in playfully imitating, all has led me to this sudden profusion of writing. I know that in time, once I've read my new pleasure cover to cover, my diction will melt back into the more hospitable American English.

What I don't know, and can't completely understand, is why this sudden addiction to bearing myself like this to a random audience? However, the why of it is simple curiosity. The result of it is my worry.

It is so painfully true that even with a dozen people's favor, one menacing insult--done not out of accident or ignorance but out of insecurity and spite--can bleaken all the rest and can poison an artist's deserved feast. We may encourage one another to rise above it and to steel ourselves against it, but the truth is, it affects us all, whether we admit it or not.

So then, I find myself going through my day hour by hour, making motions, but unable to focus on anything but this one pressing worry that I haven't even been able to quite make into words.

The best I can muster is: Am I accepted?

It's a surprising translation to this feeling I've suffered since my sudden heartwarming reception not two days ago. Surprising since the obvious answer is, "Yes, but who cares?"

Surprising more since I'd always prided myself to be someone who didn't care. I had always been one who sought to be good and worthwhile and let the world judge me as they will. And, no, it's not news to me that I am no longer that kind of person.

Maybe it's fitting, since I gained that ability long before most people, that now I have to spend a little more time now in that anguish we all go through at some point in our lives. Because the true question isn't 'Am I accepted'. The question is, "Do I accept myself?"

For that, I tend to use the tool where I liken a personality to a garden. Where while most people put up walls so others can't see the parts of them that are still growing, and still tenuous and fragile, and the result is that they never seem less than a full, complete adult, I on the other hand always opted out of walls and forever remained open because every stage of growth should be considered beautiful and worthwhile. I used to be able to do this fearlessly, knowing I could withstand those words that called me childish or incomplete, and knowing I could defend the green, weak parts of my soul.

Then, does that mean that what I'm unconsciously doing now is fulfilling the need to bear reflected images of my soul in experimentation? Not to see if I am accepted by others, but to see if I can withstand and defend against attack again? To see if I can accept, again and hopefully for the final time, myself?

So I can accept that this is how I want to be again, eventhough it's not a tactic many choose to use. And moreso, I think I'm okay with the fact that I'm not entirely ready to be that person yet, to take on that challenge without first testing my own recovery. I would rather grow sturdily than quickly.

Heh. Now that I believe I've deciphered that answer, I think I'm going to lose sleep over the fact that I've accepted myself as being unable to yet accept myself.