I wish to write a submission into brother Terry's untalented contest.

I have tried a couple of times to write something. But which aspect of myself is the truest version?

Is it possible to be objective at all about your own story? Or does honesty live within our unique subjective perspective?

I have revealed pieces of my current self recently, but I wanted to peel back some layers and reflect on the years that delivered me here.

As I thought on it I read some of the other numerous submissions and also watched a documentary about the lives of courageous refugees who have settled in the country I live in

Australia.

It got me thinking.

My past is not important.

Instantly the lyrics of a song begin to roll in my head.
This time Dylan.

I'm just average, common too
I'm just like him, the same as you
I'm everybody's brother and son
I ain't different from anyone
It ain't no use a-talking to me
It's just the same as talking to you.

I like Dylan's rambling songs.

They sound like my brain.

Constantly rolling.

Random, intrusive, tangential, epiphanies. Erupting, destructing, rumbling, tumbling. Rolling, rambling, reconstructing, rationalising. Ruminating, reflecting, deflecting, projecting, rejecting, detecting, dejecting. Demoralising, despising, surprising, realising, conspiring, retiring, refiring, refuting, disputing, rebutting.

All because, just like you -

Just like everyone, I was born with an enormous brain in comparison to my underdeveloped body. That is a distinctly human feature. Both a marvel and a malady.

Our heads.

We live inside our giant brains, synapsing.

Thinking. Hypothesising. Judging. Comparing. Enquiring. Dreaming. Hoping. Envying. Yearning. Loving. Hating. Fearing. Anticipating.

We are always alone in our synapses.
We have only words to attempt to share the content.

Words that will never be able to keep up or articulate the exact notions that originate in our heads and swell in our bellies and buzz round our cells.

Which is why words are so important.

Learning and communicating helps us connect our own little universes. As we attempt to articulate it's content.

Words roll off the tongue, and once spoken can never be retrieved.

Words have the power to inflame, defuse, burn and sooth.

Words attempt to patch one persons circuit board to another.
Helping us understand our own ideas by sharing them with others.
Learning from others.

Words are powerful.

They ignite, unite, insight, invite.

Which is why the acquisition of education that advances the expression of thought has always been controlled.

Because of the very nature of humans.

The need to conquer overriding our desire to concur.

That is our stumbling block.

Our instincts to survive and protect still collide and divide in spite of our intellect.

---

I am not unique.

I am not one in a million.
I am one of the 7 billion.

The centre of my universe, existing parallel to yours.

I came into the world screaming at my mother. I continued to scream at her until I left home at 17.

I left to challenge my parents to care enough to come and find me.
They didn't come.

My 18th birthday came and went.

I recall spending it in a garage in the back yard of a house in the company of people who didn't care at all for me.

While I waited for my family to care.

They didn't call.

---

I finished highschool from that garage and in spite of not trying very hard I was accepted into university.

I initially applied for a visual arts degree and was accepted. Art was the only thing that interested me at school.

I hesitated and switched courses before I even started, opting for a sensible career oriented choice.
The idea of attaining a qualification that would assure me of a job had me transfer to a nursing degree.

By the time I was 19 I was living in a different garage and attending university. I felt old and tired and defeated.

---

I had a tendency to hide from people if I wasn't doing too well.

I liked to be fun company to put on a show for my friends. So I would only venture out if I could be entertaining and amusing.

One evening some friends came over and dragged me out of my bed and made me come over to their share house.

For a suburban, stay home and awake all night and enrage the neighbours, TV party.

So I went with them begrudgingly, in what passed as my pyjamas with my long tangled hair rolled up in a beanie.

It was an unremarkable night, with the exception of one deadlocked bemused beauty.

I sat opposite this dishevelled wonder for quite some time. We didn't exchange a single word. In spite of the constant dialog that had always rolled in my head and spilled forth with little consideration for the consequences, my mind felt still as I gazed upon him.

Neither of us uttered a word to each other that night.

We did however know what we had discovered in the pools of each others eyes. Home.

We would both return to this house frequently, in the hopes of crossing paths again.

---

We both felt old and then young again.

Fast forward twenty years.

We have shared great joy, incredible pain and the everyday struggles, both intrinsic and extrinsic.

We are an enmeshed entangled codependent entity.

But we have endured and continue to walk this world together.

For better or worse.

---

I could tell you about the details of specific events that have occurred along the way. They have moulded us, altered us, scarred us and blessed us.

We have our children, each other, we have a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, a warm bed at night and love eternal.

We have bruised and scarred each others hearts don't doubt that.
We are human, it's our down fall and our divinity and our burden all rolled into one.

Without him My Raven, I'm sure of one thing, I would not be here at all. My story would have concluded a long time ago.

---

I have enjoyed my nursing career very much.

I have preserved life, held it in my hands and sat beside it as the last breath was expelled, the room filled with an audible buzz, leaving behind a vessel.
I have had the honour of sharing in other people's most vulnerable moments, preserving their lives for them when they couldn't do it themselves.

I find myself on steemit because my own health now prevents me from continuing this job.

Interestingly, while Steeming over the past year I have revisited my original path. Arts.

I am slowly putting together ideas for my next chapter.
I'm working with my husband to create something new.
Reengaging with the girlbefore.

---

Life events often feel like they are out of our control.

We may not be able to control everything that happens but we are the masters of our own minds. Our response to life as it unravels is up to us.

It is reliant on perspective and gratitude.

To seek opportunity and possibility within changing circumstances or become defeated and give up.

We are human.

We only truly give up when we exhale our last breath.

---

Now I live for my children.

For them I try harder to improve myself.

They chose the best bits of both of us.

I want nothing more than for them to be safe and happy.

Even when they sleep I wish I could guard them from a bad dream.
When they are at school I wish I could whisper rebuttals in their ears when bullied.
Safely escort them when they step out the door, to protect them from imagined possible evil.

I just want them to be comfortable in their skin.

That is winning.

---

When Bob Dylan started writing and performing he had many rejections. Critics said he couldn't sing, said he wasn't a poet. When he changed his style and put down his acoustic guitar and picked up an electric one, his loyal fans criticised him.

In 2016 he won The Nobel Prize in Literature.

I'm glad he didn't stop when other people told him to.

This is a piece he wrote and read live as a tribute to his mentor Woody Guthrie.

I think everyone should hear it at least once in their lifetime.

---

This is @surpassinggoogle's steemit initiative.

https://steemit.com/steemit/@surpassinggoogle/steemit-s-untalented-is-in-beta-participate-freely-because-every-participant-in-this-contest-will-win-something-no-losers

Join in and win!