Trailblazer: An Anthem of Authenticity

By Nefrit El-Or on July 17, 2024

Writer, musician, 2e AuDHD, a free spirit, a coffee lover, and a lover of Love and of knowledge, of anything whimsical and of all things Nature, Nefrit El-Or is an advocate for eating disorders recovery and autism awareness. Listen to her music at @NefritElOrMusic and read her blog on Medium.

Trailblazer: An Anthem of Authenticity

“Ima, I’m the only girl at the D&D club.”

She felt, out of place. Embarrassed.

I remembered something I recently said to someone dear to me.

“Mitzy Mollin, you be a trailblazer.” I said to her. “You are a trend setter. Not a trend follower. Be bold. Be brazen. Do as little or as much as you wish. Be you, unapologetically you. Be the genuine article. Be proud of who you are. Celebrate what you do. And people will follow your lead.”

For a moment, the world subsided into a perfect stillness. The gears turned. Appraisal took place. Weighing. Internalizing.

It satisfied her.

“Ok.”

Do not dial yourself down, my beautiful Anwen. Do not apologize for your intensities. For your fears. You are big. And lush. And multilayered. Like a Duff Goldman birthday cake. And your beauty, shines forth, unadulterated by a world that has yet to dial you down.

I am a polygonal, polymorphic, complex, complicated, multidimensional dimension of all there is and everything that lives in the interstices of the In-Between.

I am a disparate sphere, a biome subsuming all biomes. A home for all living things. I’m away East, beyond Mirkwood, an alien visiting Earth.

I am a turbulent ocean and the furtive shudder running through the unruffled lake. A basket of mismatching socks, and a beautiful puzzle comprising unbounded pieces, perfectly tessellated into an inexplicable wondrous Whole.

I am a breakfast bagel with all imaginable fixings. And a solitary, ephemeral rose, with only four thorns to defend herself against the world, devastatingly alone on this planet, here to teach little princes of Love.

I can feel it. I can sense the Universe on all its heartbreaking delights, the sorrow and the joy, the death and the rot and the birth and the life, the hate and the beauty, the sheer power of the All, pulsating through me, coursing through the fabric of my soul, all day, every day.

I am ever filled with a devastating sadness that always thrums within my heart against the ubiquitous pain, and the all-encompassing suffering of the world, against my inabilities and my shortcomings, against my profound loneliness. I am too much for the world, I am not enough. And always, it is dragging me down to a Hadesian low, with the weight of a dead albatross around my neck.

All the while I’d be filled with a rapture at a par-for-the-course crepuscular evening lowering behind the sylvan giants of our yard, and I feel as though my rib cage might burst at the rafters as it may fail to accommodate my expanding heart.

I spill over sometimes, because I cannot contain the stunning anarchy that reigns supreme within my mind, those agents of chaos stealing the whole of me to a still. My mindscapes are vast, expensively prolific, expressively rich and expansively intricate, and unending. And sometimes, the world cannot contain me either.

I belong everywhere, and nowhere.

Be you.

On every bend along your road and on every turn across the seasons of your journey. Above and below, you be you.

You set the direction, and determine the pace. You stride to your beat, and establish the tempo, and you control the cadence and paint the color of your melody.

You be all the rage. You be the vogue. You set the tone and you decide how loud or how quiet to be.

As your spirit grows and evolves, and your blossoms blow fiercely into the sun, as your soul journeys through upheavals and alterations, as you traverse the phases of your own unique expansion, as you hurt and bump and laugh and delight at this divine comedy that is life, take care, that you stay true to yourself.

The world needs you to remain, who you are.

Be a trailblazer, my Anwen. My beautiful, Anwen. And always be nobody else, but you.