You always felt like you didn’t really belong with them. Your family, friends, partners, they were all good people, but there was still something off about them, wasn’t there?
They felt off in the strangest of ways. They said they wanted your happiness, but whenever you tried to be happy they made you feel guilty.
They said they wanted you to be healthy, but whenever you tried a healthier lifestyle they ridiculed it.
They said they loved you, but whenever their love was put on the test it was always conditional.
They said they wanted you to succeed, but they were never there to support you, to cheer you up when you fought through the unwalked path alone.
They said they believed in you, but you were never their first choice to ask for advice or help when they needed some.
They said they accepted you completely, but whenever you showed your real feelings they told you to not feel what you felt, to not be angry, to not be sad, to wipe your tears, to keep your feelings to yourself, to calm down.
They said they wanted the best for you, but whenever you went after what excited your heart they were the biggest obstacles on your path claiming what you are after it’s not right for you.
You were always free to be yourself, but only if you were The You they wanted you to be.
They were never really on your side, they were never really on your team, and you knew this subconsciously, you carried this awareness deep within.
This made you confused. It made you judge yourself, it made you think that there was something wrong with you, it made you feel like a stranger in your own home.
So you started customizing yourself to fit their idea about you, because you wanted to belong, to be accepted by the people who claimed they love you and want the best for you.
You made yourself less. Piece by piece, you tore off the parts of you that you thought would be more than they could handle.
Because if that’s what it would take for you to be enough for them to accept you, want you, love you, to feel like you belong for the first time in a long time, then it’s worth it.
For a long time you pretended you were happy. Maybe sometimes you even thought you were. But you were empty, hollow, wasted away.
You tried to convince yourself you could survive this way, as a silhouette, no substance, no soul.
Weightless, you struggled to hold yourself up for as long as you could. You were putting masks after masks, pretending you were fine while you were drowning inside.
You were trying to escape yourself with every single distraction available, social media, gossip, alcohol, work, study, games. But every day you were just more miserable.
You weren’t really happy when you should have been, you weren’t really sad when you should have been. You were a ghost watching yourself fade away.
And one day everything just boiled up within you, with its last breath your true drowning self roared in rage for freedom. You wanted to scream at the world, to shatter it, to drown it.
But you didn’t. You surrendered. You looked within and gave your hand to your true self that was drowning. You picked yourself up.
That moment everything changed. You realized that you were miserable because a part of you was drowning and screaming for you to help it while you listened to everyone else.
“You are too intense, too honest, too sensitive, too pure, too complicated, too much…” they told you. “No”, you told them now.
You realized that you needed those parts of yourself people did not like and approve of, those parts you threw into the water to drown, you needed those parts back.
Those parts were the ones that held you together, the ones that made you whole. And so, one piece at a time, you began to restore yourself. Slowly, quietly.
“Maybe they wouldn’t notice” You thought. But the more complete you became, the harder it was for you to fight the truth of who you really are.
You began to share your mind, to speak your thoughts. To laugh with abandon, to allow joy, sadness, anger, enthusiasm, fear, confidence, love, everything you felt to flow from you like water, like the tears they told you to wipe out, to hold within.
You embraced your imagination, passion, creativity, intellect, complexity, intuition, your wild spirit and ferocious heart.
And they started to distance themselves. You were too much for them to handle. You did not fit their idea of you, the soulless one.
No, dear heart. You weren’t too much for them. They were never enough for you.
You were meant for something much greater than they could ever comprehend.
Maybe you will find such people to surround yourself with, people like yourself. Maybe you won’t. Either way, it doesn’t matter.
For they are not the hero of this story. You are.
You are enough. And all you will ever need is within you.
Within your goddamn gloriousness that scared them.
