I am

I am.

I am the mother who raised me

I am the philosophy that shaped me

I am Jesus who taught me to love

I am my sister who believes in me

I am my father who doesn’t like me and does not care

I am the friends whose lives have taught me how not to live

I am the insecurity that eats me from within

I am the vanity with fragile foundations

I am the arrogance that got me far, won me respect, made me work hard and made me enemies

I am the Italy 03, New York 04, Israel 06, Nigeria 07, Paris 08

I am all the teachers who thought I was wasting my potential

I am everyone who did not think I would get this far

I am the tsunami victims, the 9/11 victims – and when I say victims I mean survivors

I am the individualists also known as the conservatives who care only about themselves and their profits

I am Albert Camus who taught me the hypocrisy of man

I am Barack Obama who replaced my anti-American scepticism with hope

I am Professor Tsu who taught me that even freedom is dictated

I am the Jericho sand that redefined the word “hot” and stressed the importance of sandals

I am Jay Gatsby, believer in all that is idealistic and unrealistic

I am the Big Issue seller who thanks me in an Old Etonian voice

I am the academic structure that I loathe

I am the idiots in Plato’s Cave who refused to believe just because they had not seen

I am every eighteen year old named Victoria in England

I am the male affable directionless protagonists in Haruki Murakami’s novels

I am the hope that drives me towards the light and away from the noose

I am the dream world that I live in

I am the dawn that I like to watch breaking

I am the full moon that sends chills and awe down my spine and into my heart

I am the cynicism through which I view the world

I am… still here