The middle

It wears me down, this vision of who I’d like to be

Anxiety goes off like little flares roaming around within my spirit,

Whenever I realize how far I am from who I am meant to be

And how long the journey is through pain, grief, despair, sacrifice, obligation, incarceration, denying, asserting and accepting,

All in order to reach the shores of enlightenment

And the soft, green-sanded beaches of self-actualization

I’m held back; a prisoner of my own making

At times I can no longer see through the deceit, the lies,

The threads I’ve woven into a fabric that I present to the world as my skin

But which is in reality my shield,

A mask I let them see of everything I believe would make me worthy in their eyes

And I’ve hidden the ugliness, the remnants of past and future pain,

And the traumas that manifest themselves internally, every single wretched day

I’ve fooled them well, and in the process I’ve lost myself

Denying my soul the nourishment and catharsis of being unleashed without restraint,

Without armor, for it to be able to encompass the bounties of the world,

The evils of our time and the mystery of man, before returning to me

Weathered, but learned

Battered but blessed with the knowledge of who it truly is,

Who I truly am,

And how I can, for once, do what’s right by me.

Yet now I fear it might be too late

I’ve held back much too long

My soul is petrified of what it can learn when it tastes the richness, the decadence of liberty

And I’ve grown tired, insurmountably weary

Too intrinsically fatigued to go on this quest

See, if I am to survive,

Fighting back against the pressures to be who they want me to be,

But rather be who I was born to be,

I will have to face my greatest fear:

The middle part of this journey from the prisoner I am now

To the unshackled, unrestrained, unguarded me

It scares me because I know

I will see it in their eyes

I will hear it in the drops of their inflections

I will feel the way they will stiffen when I unfurl what’s within

And l let them see the bad with the good,

The ugly, the decayed, the saturated; the human

I wish more than anything that I could skip that part of the process

And with a deep exhale be abruptly emancipated

I do not have it in me to wage battle

Or to fight through a transformation

I don’t want a cocoon; I don’t want a warming eggshell or a womb’s embrace

I just want to be birthed, immediately, gloriously, into this world,

Just as I am meant to be

Just as I want to be

Just as I must be.