Wildly Without Shame

I open the dusty book and wipe off its pages. The smell hits me before I can even bring it close enough to read the words. Ink; etched onto paper as deep and permanent as a first tattoo. I read the words carefully. Who was she back then? How did she feel?

She was I. She was a girl with feelings too strong to contain. She was like a bird wanting to take flight and free herself from herself. Words and emotions far beyond her years would bear down wildly as an old pen and a fresh sheet of paper met for the first time. This was how she would escape, with a passionate sense of relief without discernment. Not containing her voice, her feelings or her heart.

She is the girl I long for again; the girl who expresses herself without fear of judgment and an innocence that can only come from that of a young girl who sees the world as a safe and unshaking place. To share and create what I know deep within myself, for I am no one else but me. I have no reason to compare who I am to anyone, as I am unique and talented in my own special way. This sense of belonging to me and only me does not come from a place of conceit or arrogance. Rather, it comes from a place deep within that knows we are all important. We all have something to gift to others and to ourselves; a gift that is simply and yet elaborately bestowed to us by God.

I will wildly write what is on my heart. I have always been an open book disillusioned by the idea that somehow I could contain my emotions by not giving them a voice. By trying to create strength from building up walls that I am now finding difficult to tear down, realizing now that strength comes from vulnerability. I never have been able to contain my sensitivity as it burns through my demeanor, my stance, my stare.  So I will not prohibit my emotions or my passions any longer from flowing through my hands from my heart onto paper. I will no longer silence myself while believing that I am being protective of my heart. 

I open the dusty book and wipe off its pages. The journal that began with a 9 year old is still light and now musky. This book is also me, I too have sat untouched for too long. I dust myself off of guilt and shame and will etch onto my heart my words that have a voice. I will give no regard to the judgments that come my way; from others or from myself.  I will once again fly.