Freedom Becomes You, Darling

I think I've spent a lot of my life making excuses, going out of my way to convince myself that I am not worthy or capable of becoming the person I want to be. I am too flawed, too imperfect, too tainted to know what belonging feels like. My story is messy. I'm a conglomeration of broken fragments, I've hurt others, and I'm terrified of everything.

But the thing is, there's more to me than meets the eye. I've met this other version of myself, this deeply caring, warm, courageous and sensitive creature who desperately longs to draw the beauty in every person, creature and space I'm lucky to meet, to the surface.

I want to plant gardens and speak life into those around me. I want to show my children what safety, what home can feel like. I want to be part of a community that uplifts each other. I want to create meaning and beauty from the chaos.

But that part of me scares me too, maybe even more than the darkness, because that warmth, that love, is magnetic. Love attracts. Love forces you to let the world in. And what happens if I let myself be seen? What if the world sees the brokenness in me, the imperfection, the fear? What if the world takes advantage of my raw and malleable heart? What if I am ostracized for my imperfection?

What if I am ostracized for setting myself free?

That scares the hell out of me. For the longest time, I have felt safer hiding behind a mask, choosing anger over heart-wrenching grief, choosing silent paralysis over wild pleasure, choosing insecurity and the false security of cold shoulders to protect myself from the uncertainty of warmth.

Now that I've made a home in the cold and dark layers of my soul, their familiarity feels like bondage and a light is calling to me from the cracks beneath the doors only I can unlock and open for myself.

This conformity, this hiding away has kept me safe, but this safety feels like stale air while a whole symphony of vibrant possibility ripples through the windows I'm slowly allowing myself to open.

Fresh air. Sunlight. Wide open space to feel and exist as I am, the tender of my darkest spaces, the liberator of my wildest dreams, these are the things I now long for, the flavors I'm daring to taste.

I have not come to life to lie silent and still, to hide the vibrant colors of love and sorrow painting rainbows across my heart, but to dance with the wild agony of pleasure that belongs to those who dare to drink deeply of life's bittersweet rivers flowing freely through us all.

And maybe, if I find the courage to set myself free, my freedom will not be a curse, but an invitation, proof that freedom is not only safe, but necessary, worth fighting for, and available to us all.

We've been taught our freedom is a reckless wildfire that can't be tamed, but maybe that's the point. Maybe our wild freedom is here to burn the fortresses of oppression to the ground, to liberate the songs of healing humming beneath our fear, to set loose the creatures who hunger to rip apart the constructs of order and allow the decomposition of all this artificial madness give birth to what is poignant, irreplaceable, real.

This is the world I long to live in. And if I can let myself break loose, lay my light and shadow bare for the whole world to see,

maybe

just maybe,

so can you.