Were you to show a picture of life, as it is for me this minute, to an instance of myself six months ago I am certain that this pre-now-me would smack you in the mouth and make a fairly disparaging remark about your mother.

Each of the tenants to which I had lashed the precepts of normal life to have proven somehow warped by the very act of lashing; over the years these things to which I had proposed myself in entirety had begun to bow and stretch under the weight. I realize that where I am right now, this instant, is directly the result of every choice I have made in every moment leading up to it.

“Yeah, makes sense toolbox. Welcome to reality.”

This may make sense to you, but to me it is entirely new territory. Years of feeling as though I needed to bend and twist myself to fit a supposedly desired situation has managed the converse effect of absolutely cluster-fucking my environment and my ability to wager any sort of control over it. Every insecurity indulged was a brick torn from the wall of stability that I was responsible for securing. Each moment of derision toward myself in the light of the future and my place in it only further worked to close those doors and end those lines of progress I’d have been a better man to have recognized.

Yes, yes, I realize that I am not being very clear here. Part if it is my childish need for enigmatic poetry in the written word but most of it is my desire to say to you these things and have you understand that those processes in me that turned me away from myself are complex, dangerous and sometimes wholly nebulous. This is as clear as it gets in here. I may act, stand tall and press domination, when I am asked; I may seem stern and absolute. I am none of these things. My domination is a defensive weapon, my outward strength entirely the erected shield of a terrified child. I have learned to sling words and play fancy. I have learned to press hard and target the core. I have learned to do this because I have not learned how to deal with those things that have owned and torn me since the dawn of my consciousness.

As a result, everything is different now.

I’ve pulled off the reins now. I have done so wholesale. I have done so without regard. This isn’t so much improvement as it is opportunity for improvement. It is also opportunity for dire and succinctly devastating pain.

Things may get weird. Titular, I know. I don’t have real boundaries, you see. I don’t know them. I have imposed weird and, frankly, destructive boundaries in the past based on fear and insecurity. I have, in doing this, stopped a lot and lost more. Here, at the dawn of things anew, I will hold myself to no precept beyond those immovable moral and intuitive structures that I could never chose to change.

Those of you who know me may understand this to be a terrifying decision. My general meter and presence can get to the outer edge of normalcy when girded, so what may come of this newly born lack of restraint?

Me.

Yes, things may get weird. I walk into the future armored for those bruises that I will undoubtedly acquire. I walk into the future with my mind blazing, my heart open and my dreams on my sleeve. I walk into the future with the understanding that the only way I am going to be what I want to is to do so with every part of me. I walk into the future forgiven.

And so do you.