Shape Shifter

I change. Constantly, dramatically, irrevocably. I am always developing new habits, new looks, new tastes. I become new people, different people. I am always searching for the person I want to be, the person I was born to be. When I was a kid, back in elementary school, we had to write a paper about someone we wished we could be. I wrote that I just wanted to be myself. I guess my self-esteem was a little higher back then. The truth is, there's still no one particular person I would want to trade places with. Instead I sneak around and pluck little pieces off of other people and keep them for myself, fitting myself together like a puzzle made up of the stolen bits of those I admire. A word here, a walk there, a smile, a gesture; absorbing them all and making them my own. Sometimes, though, I wonder who I do this for. Why do I go through all this trouble of constructing a new person over and over? Am I really doing it for myself or am I just hoping that someday I'll become someone that will appeal to some imagined soul-mate? Do I try on a thousand different faces hoping to find one that properly fits my skull or am I just looking for one that shines bright enough to guide the right person to me?

First poem in a while. Don't judge it too harshly. Normally I go through a lengthy editing process, but I just wrote this one on the spot.