I’ve been dying to live.
It’s a deep yearning within me,
a thirst I cannot quench,
a desire I cannot escape.
And yet I have never lived.
I have never known true love.
I have never experienced true joy.
I have never even met myself.
So I continue to yearn and pine,
searching for life wherever I go.
Consumed by despair, I cannot help
but feel trapped within myself.
Living simply isn’t meant for me,
so I resign myself to a slow and painful death.
I’ve been dying to live
so I follow the script I was given,
hoping to find joy at the end of every act.
See, we come into the world soft and malleable
and the world tells us
“we will show how you are, who you are meant to be.”
We are never asked to reveal our true selves.
Act we must, so act I do.
I remain shackled to the expectations,
I drown in my shame,
and I am haunted by my traumas.
It is hard to grieve all that I could have been
when I don’t know who I truly am.
I’m tied to the script of who I should be.
Act we must, so act I will.
I’ve been dying to live
yet I cannot escape my prison.
I chose to build it out of glass but it will not break.
I have nightmares where I scream for help,
where I reveal myself and all my deepest wounds
to those around me.
But they don’t see me or hear me
and when they do, they mock me.
I wake up in shock because I’m living in my nightmare.
Awake or asleep, I am trapped in a prison of my own making.
I have no courage to break out of it,
even though those who love me beg me to.
They want to meet the real me
but I don’t know how to tell them I have nothing to offer.
How can they meet the real me when I, too, do not know her?
When I do not know how she looks,
how she laughs, how she cries,
or how she loves?
I, too, do not love her
so how can anyone else claim to?
I’ve been dying to live
so I’m learning to break free.
I have chosen to meet myself,
to choose myself,
to love myself.
It is a painful process.
I don’t know how to love myself.
I don’t know how to treat myself with kindness.
I don’t know how to tend to my wounds,
or how to nurture myself.
But I have been yearning to live
so I can longer hold myself hostage
to the expectations, the shame, or the trauma.
To turn a villain into a hero is hard work
but I must become my own hero.
Only I can save myself from my own hatred.
Living in despair, distress, and anguish
simply isn’t an option anymore.
Not when I can rewrite the story.
I’ve been dying to live
so die I must
and live I will.