I am realizing more and more that if I am to be free in everyway I have to be honest in everyway. Liberty comes from truth with oneself. It means being vulnerable, cut open, and raw. It means no more hiding my feelings under smiles. No more pretending this doesn’t hurt me and that doesn’t heal me. No more playing it safe and being a prisoner of fear.

One of my greatest battles is holding back because I am afraid of pain. Afraid of what this world or another human being could do to me. But I know that if I stay like this, if I keep running away I will spend my entire life chained up by regret, misery, brokenness.

Life is a gift. Living is a risk. I want to enjoy my life. I want to fight for it. I want to take chances and risk pieces of me knowing that being alive means sometimes you get hurt. You get wounded. You fall. You fail. You at times lose.

But I am going to try and have the confidence life requires of me. To trust that there is nothing and no one that can keep me on my knees. There is no one and nothing I cannot recover from.

Before I die I want to know what it means to live. To love. To be me free, me proud, me true. And that means no more running away from what and who I want and need. No more hiding my dreams in journals. No more holding back my feelings for fear of getting hurt.

My skin is thick. My heart is strong. My soul is filled with dreams. I will live this life, my life. I will live it free and true and open.

We are the readers. We are the ones who want to know more. We are the ones who observe the fictional and the real. We are the ones who create the story, even when there isn’t one there to begin with. We are the ones you write for. We are the ones who make things more interesting because we can find the story in every conversation, in every interaction. We are the ones who will never stop learning, dreaming, hoping, finding. We are the ones will never stop trying to figure it out, and will always be aware that we never will… it’s what keeps us searching, looking, wanting.

Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.