Is it true? Did you lie to me? How can you instruct me on how to live with your words and paint lies my hopeful heart with lies? I pushed myself away from my goals and my ambition because of you. I thought I was to blame for the extension because of you. I sat and soaked in my shame for years because I thought what you said was true.
Then you sanded down my only true Hope to help me feel "positive." You painted over my emotions with a thick silver lining that I could not see through. It has taken years, and perhaps there will be more to come, for me to be able to peel back the layers of falsities and thinly veiled promises. I'm a product of my environment but that is not all I am.
I'm growing stronger and more set in my convictions everyday. I cannot continue to sleep here with your artificial lights and lampposts. I cannot let you tuck my sisters and brothers in to sleep each night with your smallpox-laced blankets. Your comfort is not comfortable; it's complacency. You whittle down profound truths to bite size snippets and do not replace the pieces that you've shaved off. Or you replace them with your own thoughts and with your own opinions.
We must not all be like you. We were made different intentionally. Thank God not a stroke will be added, nor even a mark be truly taken away. I'm afraid that I too am guilty but I cannot absolve you or me. I won't paint the shadows with glowing hues just to hide their true identity and I won't be serenaded to sleep with your fables of fictitious freedom fighters. We all have faith in something and I won't let you rob me of mine.
