Free...

Self expression is a double edged sword.

It can cut you open and leave you to bleed.

Spilling your soul onto the clear blanket of eternity.

Giving you the freedom

to say what you want no matter the outcome.

The constraints of society split

like the sea before Moses.

Holding nothing back.

You must accept the bite of the blade.

Take it into yourself and let it set you free.

Or it will swing back

and the cut will go deeper.

You will be trapped within yourself.

Instead of being free,

you will be buried beneath the pain.

Just like I was.

For so long, I was trapped in a cocoon.

Afraid to be myself.

Afraid that if I showed myself to the world,

no one would accept me.

The courage to be who I am

was buried underneath

the broken child I used to be.

It has taken years for the child to fade

and the woman underneath emerge.

Years spent afraid to stand out.

Always giving in to other’s desires,

making them my own.

Afraid to take what I wanted

because others would not like it.

For so long I was about pleasing others.

Being like them so that they would like me.

The broken child starved for affection.

Any kind was craved, even welcomed.

She didn’t know the difference

between real affection based on truth

and the affection based on lies.

She still lives inside me

crying out for love and affection.

Only now, she is not in control.

Slowly the shackles of fear

are falling away.

I am becoming free to be who I want.

Secure in the knowledge that

it doesn’t matter if people like who I am

because I am the only one who matters to me.

I have taken control of the sword

that once shredded the person I was.

Now it lets me loose

to be the person I was always meant to be.