Walls
I know how it feels to look in the mirror bare-faced and stare into the eyes of a stranger, someone so familiar yet different. To stare into the eyes of the person you once used to be before you became discontent; before you doubted that you could be; before the lies became your way and you lost touch with who you were. The masks you wore so often, became your identity; the filters and edits had you confused for someone you weren't. But behind the smiles and laughter lurked the real you. The version of you no one else knew. You defined yourself by what you were famous for. You forgot that there was much more to you than your ability to make the crowd cheer or make the masses wild, drunk with their love for you.
With powder and blushes, you covered the wounds that had you bleeding. But you paid no attention to the source of your bruises; cuts created from betrayals and abandonment, and scars that dug deep into your mind. You became the reflection of those who hurt you, reflecting all the hurt they caused, defending yourself the way you knew how.
With walls as high as towers, you built a place of solitude and fortified them with lies birth from all the pain they had caused. But the invisible walls you put up couldn't keep them out. Instead, it locked you in, enclosed in your mind’s tiny frame. Every opinion contrary to yours couldn't fit in the puny castle you built, so, you rejected them tagging them lies. You cared not if their intentions were good or bad. You let no one in. Every foreigner you tagged an enemy.
Now you're suffocating in your castle built from hurt. You can't reach out for help, because the walls hold you in, tight in a painful embrace. When you wish to scream, you squeak, afraid you'd be ignored. Every hand that tries to reach in to pull you out resembles the hands of the very ones that tore you down. The haven you built has become an abyss, plunging you deeper and deeper into a world unknown; a world of self-pity and hate, distress and pain, pride and lies. The only way out is in and you have no courage to bring down the walls. Because to bring them down would make you vulnerable to the very ones you chose to elude.
