What are the rules I want to Break?

2/19/2025

Do I feel the need to punish myself?

To protect others. To sacrifice for my kids. To not be the bad guy by talking about the “bad guy.” Because I understand where things are coming from. Because I’ve made mistakes and it’s hurt the people that I love, it has hurt my children, and I didn’t do for them what I wish that I had. Because I’m not worthy if I’m not producing. Because I’m an embarrassment to the people I love so I must do better, be better and hold myself to a higher standard. Because I don’t feel the joy in the world that I used to. Because I’m ashamed of living in ways that makes my parents feel like they failed me. Because I don’t want my parents to know all the things I’ve done and be embarrassed of me in their social circles. Because I have been told and believe that the only people who like me are the ones who aren’t close enough to know me. 

 

What are the rules that I want to break?

That mistakes don’t define you they refine you. That my errors are the scars that show a life lived on the edge. That yes, I have gone to the border of what is and isn’t acceptable I have stood on the cliff edge and screamed in defile towards the wind only for it to blast me backwards and teach me that whatever power I think I have is incomparable to the laws of nature. But I am unafraid of that deep fall.

I will stand and cry out again and again. I will be tossed back again and again. I will risk being thrown over the edge, to live. To share my light that only I carry to be who I am here to be, to speak what I am here to say. Yes, oh yes have I made mistakes, and they fly like red flags of red rover behind me, they trail past where they eye can see- but this rope and ribbons is the ladder I use to climb up that cliff face again. 

It is also the lasso I use to claim my dreams. I am here. Let those who judge and condemn me fall to the side and part ways filing into the bleachers of onlookers unwilling to walk their own truth.