fear

Fear vs Hope

Poetry

You know when you realise you’ve wasted half your life on misguided fear

Like a drunken misadventure and you’ve become aware far too late, that this person you’re cosying up to in the corner, you wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole if sober

Had you seen with clear eyes that this affair with fear was only going to leave you out in the cold, identity clouded and searching for your soul

Too many times I let your interest define me, your disinterest define me

Wasn’t taught to value me, was only mocked and disciplined for who others moulded me to be

You bartered for my sexuality like I was yours to buy, only children caught in an adults game

But it’s not charades, it’s not pretending when you touched me like you owned me and sent fear into the very heart of me

And I learnt that attention from boys, attention from men equalled desirability

So I laughed off education, surrendered to depression and defined my life by sexual admiration

All the while fear crept in, it kept me caged, it kept me in and I never explored or had adventures with people or stories that fed my soul

Fed it with hope, fed it with joy, fed it with possibility

And even though I know there is freedom from fear, still I struggle daily

Don’t want to let those ugly moments define and chain me

Want to be able to see a clean page free from insecurity

So every day in some small way I stand defiant of all that fear

Fear that I’ve wasted it all and it’s way too late to live my life with eyes that see and a heart that hopes

I look in the mirror and see who God sees, a miracle, a life, purpose in living

I will not be defined by the ghosts of the past, I’ll be defined and changed by truth and love