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This photo says a lot on it's own. I thought about leaving this post bare, leaving only the photo here to speak for me but then I realized that I have a lot to say too. But I don't know if now is the right time...Chains.
I used to have them. But you couldn't see them and neither could I. But sometimes I would catch sight of myself in the mirror, a unintended glance that froze me. The look in my eyes would scare me but then I'd blink and it would be gone. That look was broken but my exterior wasn't broken at all, it was funny and entertaining, extroverted and outgoing.
It's a complicated situation that was long and arduous, summed up in a few loose thoughts, posted here in a few loose paragraph. A sentence can't show everything that was felt when the realization set in and a sentence can't describe why survival had meant uncountable walls painted with artificial faces projected to the world.
I was an irrevocably honest reflection of the world around me but it was always turned away from me. But now it's changed, I'm facing that mirror again, I'm seeing the unseen, just like that x-ray: I can't have that life anymore and I can't be that person that lives in chains with leering futility on my shoulders, bearing down and breaking.
There's a part of me that refuses. It whispers and says 'But you could, you could do it again' but I see now that my deepest fear is only a choice shifting in the shadows, waiting to be made and this time I'm choosing to say no, I could go back but I won't.