A soundscape to my life...

Most of my life, I gave up my agency. I thought that the answers were outside of myself instead of within. After all that’s what I was taught. The notion of sin being equated with not being enough was indoctrinated into my younger self. Yes, I own that some of this was due to my own, then perfectionist standings. One song reverberated through my teen years, but I didn’t see until adulthood how it would prove to be my north star...
 
 So my reflections on the song, “She” by Green Day:

"She...
She screams in silence
A sullen riot penetrating through her mind
Waiting for a sign
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control"

Little did I know that this self-control and silence were the things restricting and harming me in the first place. I couldn't see my own chains of trying so hard to fit in. There were so many rules in that prison that I almost became a shadow... a whisper of who I could truly be. Big, brave, beautiful.

"Are you locked up in a world
That's been planned out for you?"

I answer that I was locked up in such a prison which I resided in for a long time. I was scared to break out though. I was afraid of what life would look like if I was wild enough to oppose the establishment laid out before me. The fears echoed in my brain from the sea of voices around me.

"Are you feeling like a social tool without a use?"

I nod as I realize the only use I had fulfilled was that of wife and mother. Those jobs weren't necessarily bad, but I was more than that. I had dreams of my own... I wanted to be a difference in more than my little microcosm.

"Scream at me until my ears bleed
I'm taking heed just for you"

I release my siren, my objection to being controlled, oppressed. Admittedly, this act of defiance is scary to those still within the establishment. I’m aware of this, but I know I must cast off the chains I wore voluntarily for so long...

"She...
She's figured out
All her doubts were someone else's point of view
Waking up this time
To smash the silence with the brick of self-control"

I look within to the quiet places of my heart, I listen. I slowly prune away the messages that don’t work. I peer out before me and make a way on a road of my own making.