It started with a question, a plea:

This fear! God, how do I live? With this fear? How do I get past this?”

I am here. The same as always.

This fear is your way of protection. You learned it a very long time ago. It keeps you small, and hidden away. It keeps you ‘safe’ and within the bounds that were put on you. As long as you stayed within the bounds of fear, you wouldn’t be hurt. That was the reason for it.

It was effective.

It was like a ring around a growing root, holding it in a certain shape, a certain diameter.

It worked really well. You got more love and approval than anyone. You were made to order, just for them. Their delight. Custom ordered, tailor-made, to their preferences. And now you are grown. And now what will you do?

How long will you keep living within the bounds that they put on you?

A captive animal, released into the wild, is afraid to leave it’s cage. That’s all it knows.

It is very strange and dangerous out there. Terrifying. Anything could happen. It’s entirely unknown.

But it might be just fine.

You know you have to find out. You know you can’t stand hiding any longer. You know you need to get out.

And somewhere, somehow, you have the sense that…it is okay. You have the inkling that it’s beautiful out there. That it’s full of sunshine.

Other people are out there, and they seem to be okay. Better than okay, they seem to be fabulous.

You worry for them. You judge them. You can’t believe their scandalous and shameless openness. You think something must be wrong with them, or something bad is bound to happen to them, because they are…naked dancing while hang-gliding, while crying in public, and every possible crazy and dangerous and vulnerable thing.

And they do feel pain sometimes, you see it. Crushing, breath-taking pain. But don’t you? Don’t you?

And don’t you feel another kind of pain here, crouching in your cage, with the open door? The ache of your un-stretched limbs? The dull, constant pain of unexpressed gifts? The leaden loneliness of unrecognized beauty?

And the people out there flying; they fall. Yes, and they bleed, and they shatter.

And they get back up, and they do it again. See them getting back up? After terrific, public, epic failure. What else do they have to do, but get back up and get back to it? They’re used to it.

Or, they die.

Of course, they die!

And so do people in cages. They tend to die of different things. Would you rather die of over-exposure, or rot to death, secretly, in your dark little cage? There’s not much else to do, darling. What are you alive for?”