No One Really Tells You The Hardest Part Of Getting Older

[chia]

51. My life has been all about what people expected of me. I had a window opened once, a decade ago,

by someone who showed me who I could be, if I only reached for it. It was an exhilarating, wild time of creativity and dreaming and hope for the future. Of learning to be being true to myself, learning how not to box myself in, throwing off the expectations of others, everything bursting into life. I had a year, more than a year, to live on my own for the first time in my life. I wrote as fast as I could to keep up with the words and ideas tumbling out from somewhere I didn't know I had. And then everything changed, and the window closed to just a crack, and I'm harnessed again to a life that's 'good enough.' I feel guilty, knowing that my 'good enough' is 'safe enough' to be desirable to those who live with fear or uncertainty. But every day I sit at my window and wonder how to throw it wide again. I have a couple decades left to figure it out.