I have yet to find my niche. When I say that I have no habitual genre in which I write, people look at me as though I am a poet with no rhyme or a priest without a religion. There is some truth in their askance glances; I feel out of place as well. Life is an awkward, weird thing without a niche, without a home.
I don't know if it's coincidence or not that the word "niche" is very similar to Nietzsche, the philosopher who said, "That which does not kill me will only make me stronger." Yeah. Nietzsche. Not Kanye West. Yeesh. Anyway, if it is a coincidence, then fate has a profound grasp on irony. It's a brilliant juxtaposition: on the one hand, one who promotes individualism and touts the nonconformist, and on the other, a habitat, an ecosystem, a grouping. Let me repeat that. A grouping.
I have been against conformity for years. I am a homosexual in a town of homophobes, I am a liberal in a state of conservatives, I am a slow-burn entertainer in a world of instant-gratification entertainment. My works, a collective something in which at this point I'm not sure if I should take pride or not, are complex things, things to be digested, read and reread, mulled over, in this nation, this world-nation, where media is click boom click boom click boom.
I am against conformity, and yet I am a conformist. I wouldn't have chosen homosexuality, had I had a choice, because it would have been easier. I wouldn't have chosen liberalism if I weren't a homosexual. I wouldn't have started writing if I hadn't felt the primordial call. I want the traditional version of marraige rather than leaving well enough alone and taking a life-partner, because I want to fit in.
I've always wanted to fit in, and yet in my heart of hearts I know that I can never do so.
Life is a great and terrible thing, a subject that I continually expound upon, and for that, Eternal Readers, I am sorry, for I must seem redundant and pretentious. However, life is my canvas, writing my brush, and my experience my paint. I will paint a picture with words; I will fire into the cavalry of Ignorance with my pencil-weapon, I will rail against defeatist attitudes tooth-and-nail, hyphen-and-synecdoche-and-diction-and-tooth-and-nail. I will write, and I will attempt to change the world in some infinitesimal fashion so that the norm changes as to where I can finally feel as though I belong.
My niche is bred of imagination, and composed of eventualities, and is laid upon a foundation of what-ifs.
Until the eventualities become realities, and the what-ifs become then-becauses, I will write. And I will continue to write.
I take my stance, and the world can say what it will.
I spread my arms wide. Here I am, World. Notice me and not my writing. Notice who I am at my core, what I believe, who I love.
Notice me, and give me a niche.