Blog

I have never been good at being predictable. Not in the ways people hope for, not in the ways that make them comfortable. I’ve tried, but every time I tuck myself neatly into a box, I feel myself suffocate. And so I slip out again, sometimes quietly, sometimes explosively, because my spirit does not know how to sit still inside a script.

People call it many things—reckless, impulsive, unstable. They don’t always mean to wound me, but the words land heavy anyway. What I hear underneath is: you are not safe to love, not safe to trust, not safe to keep. In a world that worships predictability, to be a wild card is to walk through life both magnetic and misunderstood. People are drawn in by the spark, the laughter, the rawness—and then, at some point, they recoil. My fire burns too unpredictably. My emotions swell too deeply. My choices don’t line up with their rules. Suddenly the thing that made me radiant becomes the thing that makes me “too much.”

I can remember exact moments when this shift happened. Standing in the middle of a crowded room, making people laugh, feeling the pull of attention, and then feeling the air change—the moment when my energy went from fascinating to overwhelming. I could feel it in the silence, in the sideways glances, in the way people stepped back just slightly. Too loud, too emotional, too unpredictable. So I learned to shrink. I practiced quiet. I tucked myself into smaller versions to be less threatening. But every time I did, I felt like I was betraying myself. It was like wearing clothes too small—acceptable enough for others, but suffocating for me.

And yet even when I tried to fold myself into neat lines, I couldn’t hold it for long. I would break my own rules. I would say the unfiltered thought that slipped out before I could catch it. I would quit the job that looked good on paper but drained me inside. I would follow desire instead of duty, curiosity instead of caution. I would fall too hard, too fast, into people or passions that made no sense to anyone but me. Every time I tried to belong to predictability, something in me broke free and reminded me: I was never built to be safe.

Being a wild card feels like carrying both danger and freedom in your body. It is intoxicating, and it is exhausting. It’s lying awake at night knowing you might always be someone’s thrill but rarely their comfort. It’s craving stability and yet rejecting it whenever it comes too close. It’s wanting to be chosen, to be kept, but knowing that your edges and your depths and your unpredictability scare people who want control more than they want truth.

Sometimes it hurts so much I wish I could trade myself in for a steadier version. The kind of person who follows the rules, ticks the boxes, gives predictable answers and never overwhelms the room. I imagine what it would be like to be adored for my consistency instead of punished for my unpredictability. To be called safe instead of wild. To be easy instead of complex. There are nights I ache for that version of belonging, the kind that doesn’t cost me parts of myself just to keep it.

But I know I couldn’t survive that life. Predictability has never birthed me joy. It has never given me love worth remembering. It has never led me to beauty or passion or intimacy that cracked me open in the best ways. My wildness, as costly as it is, is also the reason I’ve touched freedom. It’s the reason I’ve chased sunsets without explanation, kissed strangers in moments that felt like eternity, walked away from cages everyone else called security. It’s the reason I feel everything with such unbearable intensity, and yes, that hurts—but it also means I am alive.

The truth is, unpredictability has its own wisdom. What looks wild from the outside is often just another form of presence. I don’t want a life mapped out so tightly that could change me. I want the ache of curiosity, the pull of instinct, the risk of desire. I want to make choices that make no sense on paper but every kind of sense in my bones.

Being a wild card is not easy. It means living with rejection, with people walking away because they can’t understand you. It means being punished for your intensity, your depth, your refusal to play small. But it also means living with possibility. It means trusting that the ones who stay are the ones who fire as holy, not hazardous. It means letting go of the ones who only wanted you dim.

It is a kind of intimacy with the unknown. Most people run from uncertainty, clinging to schedules and structures that make them feel in control. I have had to learn how to live inside uncertainty, how to treat it like a home instead of a threat. And when I stop fighting it, I can see the beauty in it. Uncertainty is where art breathes. It is where passion grows. It is where love unfolds without a script. It is where the wild card makes sense, even if the world never admits it.

I beginning to see that being a wild card is not my flaw—it is my offering. The world may not always know what to do with me, but I do. I am not here to be predictable. I am not here to be safe. I am here to burn, to disrupt, to love without conditions, to follow the unruly rhythm of my own heart.

And if that means I am too much, if that means I am left out, if that means I am misunderstood, then so be it. Because what it also means is that I am free. Free to live a life that is mine, free to touch possibility, free to be alive in ways predictability could never allow.

I am the wild card. Not the safe option. Not the easy one. But the one who will never betray herself to be palatable. The one who will choose fire over comfort, truth over approval, freedom over predictability. And in the end, I would rather be misunderstood and alive than predictable and hollow.