"Lizards are awful, one once actually bit a puppy.."

My Grandmother is praticing to be Steve Irwin.

She caught a lizard underneath a jar in her kitchen last week. It's still there. Before she trapped it she had sprayed it with laundry starch. She described it as "a crafty little bugger." My Grandmother is a strong woman in my opinion.
And I always love it when the strong woman come together and I get to be around them. It makes me feel safe enough to show my own, my real strengths.

Because I always like to pretend that I'm confident and above all comments made about me.
I pretend that I can handle everyone else's problems as well as my own.
I like others to believe that I am always, eternally happy in a disney-esque manner.
Lies are so beautiful, no?

But I have so much real strength! I have things that I actually succeed in! Things that I only feel able to flaunt while I'm within the realm of strong women.

I don't particularly admire myself, because I am intuitive enough to see the flaws. I'm also intelligent enough to know that what most of my thoughts and ideas is utter bull.
I might not be able to carry the world upon my shoulders, but I can empathize. I will cry with you even if I have never met you. I will keep you on my mind and in my heart, though you might be a perfect stranger. Because I wish happiness to people.
And I am not able to be a continual bowl of sunshine-soup. But, though I don't always feel or show it, I am capable of true, free joy of the highest degree.
Those are my strengths.
And I want the the universe to incorporate them into it's dance, and not make me change my steps in order to fit into it's routine.

I've seen worse damage done by My Little Pony wars.

There were words floating across the room, and I am more then certain that the speaker would have wished to be doing anything else then uttering them aloud. They were words of confession, and vulnerability. I heard in them an imploring for the hearer to be worthy of such a trust, to stand by them no matter what. A shy fear echoed in the undertones, and you could tell this was a world shaking monologue. But, for a five year old, many things are world shaking.

I'm not so brave as that little girl. Terror of my explanations being inadaquet, of my words being misunderstood keeps me from offering any. Same reason I'm ashamed of poetry I've written, as if I'm far too untilligent to write anything comprehensible. Same reason I'm too self concious to dance, clumsy and awkward. It would be so rude of me to place another in a situation where they would have to respond to my ungraceful attempts at expression!

In the end I held my little girl in my lap, her head burried in my shoulder, as she finished explaining herself to her friend. And I'm jealous of the simple aid it offered her. I wish I could burrow my head in the jacket of a friend, comforted in the trust of loyalty through it all, while I expose my reasons, my desires, my beliefs, my life.

"She told me she won't be my friend anymore..."
"But darling, you can sit with me."