Cage-Free

Life isn’t perfect and it’s those imperfections that I love the most, it’s what makes the world so interesting and colorful and alive to me. 2010 was not the year that I expected it to be, but it’s turns out that it was exactly what I needed it to be. I made lots of mistakes, had too much fun and not enough fun sometimes. I laughed a lot, cried a lot, was terrified many times and unbelievably happy and content at other times. That might make me sound a bit manic, but I guess that’s what happens when life changes so unexpectedly quite a few times in a short period of time. I faced more personal and professional challenges in this last year, than in the past few years combined…so if I had to describe 2010 in one word it would be, challenging. And I’m not one to ever back down from a challenge.

Despite all the difficult times of the past year, 2010 did give me an amazing gift, that I don’t believe I would have received had I not be forced time and time again, by circumstances beyond my control, to really assess my life, its direction and the influences of others in my life.  In being forced to take a step back and slow down, I found me again. I didn’t even realize that I was lost until I found myself. Or maybe I didn’t even know who I had become to begin with, I was living with so many other people’s perceptions of me and who they thought I should be and how I fit into their idea of me, that I didn’t know what aspects of their perceptions of me, were really me. I allowed myself to feel trapped in this cage of other people’s perceptions of who I am, that when the door to the cage opened, I didn’t know how to fly out.

It was then that I decided that never again, never again would I feel trapped. Never again will I let myself feel caged in by anyone or anything…I’ve never liked fences or cages or zoos for that matter because I couldn’t stand the thought of any being not being allowed to fly, to explore, to live outside of a manmade confinement…and I couldn’t believe that I allowed myself to feel trapped…to feel confined and as I was the one who allowed those walls to be built, I had to be the one to tear them down. And I am…slowly I’m demolishing that cage and learning to disregard other people’s inaccurate perceptions of me, as they only hold me back.

So I thank you 2010, for giving me my wings to fly away from that cage, to no longer feel trapped. And soon, I will be getting my first tattoo, birds in flight, so I will always remember that I know how to fly and to remind me that I will never allow myself to feel caged in again.