Member-only story
I Choose Red!
Prompt: What does freedom mean to you?
“You want the blue pill or the red pill?”
“The red.”
“Are you sure? No one’s ever come back after taking red,”
“I choose red.”
“Fine, symptoms include chaos, trolls, community shunning, a shit load of anxiety, splashes of rejection, and a dab of loneliness,”
“Red.”
They say your true self is the kid inside. You know, the kid that questions the world and its rules before society gaslights you into becoming someone else. Before they shape you and shame you into who you’re supposed to be.
So you go around acting like who you’re supposed to be, and that’s still not good enough for society. It doesn’t protect you from anything either. You start searching for things to fill a void, but nothing really fills it.
And then, BOOM.
You stumble into a little bit of truth and have an epiphany- the void was you the whole time. The real you. The kid inside.
It feels so good to swim in the truth, even though it's against the tide. Getting rid of the chains of guilt and the belief system I grew up with, the history I was taught, and the lies I was told came crashing down altogether.
Stomping on who I was supposed to be is the most soul-freeing thing I have ever been through. There’s no way I can go back to yesterday. The blinders are off. My status is on permanent “ un-learning, “ and I want to speak my truth. It’s a high I can’t stop chasing.
That’s what freedom means to me. Speaking and writing about the truth.
