An Ode To The Difficult

Loving us don’t come easy.

The definition of difficult is something that requires effort, skill, or depth to deal with or understand. Apply that to people, and you begin to see their necessity. Difficult people do not seduce you with ease. They are the enemy of the lazy, the mirror that terrifies the cowardly, the irritant to the self-satisfied. To the ignorant, they are intolerable. To the weak, they are crucified. They are not here to smooth life over. They are here to make it real.

Of course, there are many breeds of difficult. Some create chaos for the sake of it, and they give the rest a bad name. But then there are the others. The ones whose resistance, whose refusal to be easy, forces progress. The ones who rattle cages not because they enjoy the noise but because silence has grown poisonous.

I have been called difficult.

There was a time when that word felt like a death sentence, a social exile. I carried it like a curse, bending myself into apologies until I was unrecognizable even to myself. I was too much, too outspoken, too raw. I thought being called difficult meant I was defective.

But one day I was faced with a choice. I could stay silent and safe, or I could say the thing no one else would dare to say. I spoke. It cost me. A man without spine, too brittle to confront his own weakness, labeled me difficult so he could sleep well at night. That is the day I realized the truth: being called difficult was not a condemnation. It was confirmation.

Because if difficult means my honesty unsettles your lies, I accept it.

If difficult means I demand more from you than comfort and mediocrity, I accept it.

If difficult means I will not carry your bullshit and will not ask you to carry mine, I accept it.

Easy is pleasant. Easy is a lazy river where eventually you grow bored and restless. Easy keeps us the same. Easy is a coma.

Difficult is where the spark lives. It is where standards get challenged, where minds expand, where truth gets dragged into the light. Difficult is where people stop coasting and start becoming.

History was not shaped by the agreeable. It was shaped by those labeled unmanageable, unruly, and yes, difficult. Without them, we would have no revolutions, no renaissances, no movements that shifted the axis of the world.

So, am I difficult? Absofuckinglutely. It’s as simple as that.

Written to “Map Of The Problematique” by Muse.