Declaration of Independence

Sometimes you just need to tell people who you are in order to remind yourself.

I, Megan Gates, being of sound mind and body, do declare myself to be me in the face of you.

Let me be messy and moody and seamlessly emotional. Let me be restless in my own skin and wake up searching. Find me laying late at night under the stars and let it not be a question what I'm doing there. Understand me without explanation or justification. Let me take up painting and singing and dreaming, even when I'm not good at them. Watch me believe in ghosts and not so much in religion. Let me have the foulest curse words and don't wonder why I can't take your calls during West Wing. See me through the fleeting crushes and the constant turmoil and eclectic happiness of one love. Let me not feel foolish for refusing to see boundaries. Sit with me while I reveal profound moments in days and relationships and sit longer still while I appreciate them. Appreciate them with me. Love my lack of self-control and my financial instability. Don't look at me funny when I cry in theaters and during presidential debates. Find my bad driving record endearing. Forgive me for falling in love with everyone I meet. Understand it when I say it’s one of my best qualities. Don't discount my quiet insecurities and my loud stubbornness. Let me withhold and disclose at arbitrary moments. Learn to love the fact that I always have one drink too many. Don’t tell me it’s silly to always want my bare feet in the grass. Practice with me the language of candor and of passion and of sincerity and depth that I've learned over the years. Embrace my inability to give up without a fight. Laugh with me at the same dirty jokes. Accept my interest in things unjust and causes controversial. Look past my penchant for daydreaming and my proclivity for obsessing over the little details. Stand with me, staring in awe at the vastness of the universe and feel with me the energy of all things connected. Then grab my hand when it gets dizzy and overwhelming. Let me have my hereditary insomnia and love of cuddling on couches two small for the two of us. Give me my poetry, cookbooks with dog-eared pages and scribbled in art history books. Question with me when I wonder about the hows, whens and whys. And then know why I must live a life so inquisitive. Remember that introverted and aloof are not terminal states of me. Forget weeks when it feels like they are. Let you not ruin my love for sappy, romantic gestures and the notion I carry that love can still be breathtaking.

And above all...let me be. Me.