I don't even know where to begin anymore.
If I'm honest, it seems like anything true I feel that I try to express runs up against more and more opposition, and I'm tired. I'm tired of feeling like a tool for others to prove themselves right, and I don't know what I really believe or trust in anymore. At least...not in the terms that anyone else uses. My heart's language is drifting further out to sea, while the call of everyone else claiming to know where I should go is all inland.
I'm not ready, and I refuse to be lied to.
Somewhere along the way, I became desperately dependent on the approval of those around me, above me, beside me. And for my trouble, I have fallen on the side of the road, with the ashes of the dreams I claimed were my fire choked in my throat. The things that once made me feel excited are now a source of guilt, a neglected duty to uphold the identity I built for myself. I've made many terrible mistakes, but the worst was to shape my image around passions I was weak in. They still ring in the back of my heart, and I haven't given them up. But for now, they are mine alone, to listen closely to, to follow in the way that I know only I can discover, until my voice returns.
Whose life am I really living?
I do not know myself as I ought to, and I've stifled my heart until it's turned to a cold stone. The world's voices are far too loud.
I've accepted no mentors. I need to make this journey alone. When the time for me to seek guidance comes, it will be my choice, not their demand. I will not be anyone's mechanism to ease their conscience, or their need to feel right or superior. Maybe I sound bitter. And maybe I am. But it will not be undone until I am ready to face it.
And I don't think I can become selfless until I face the fact that I am not.
